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Ask HN: How good is the job market for .NET stack?

7 points by vcool07 ↗ HN
I've been learning a bit of C# and ASP.net on my own since the past few days and planning to enroll in a few paid courses to get better. But I've been told that the job market for .net stack is pretty limited (at-least in India, where I'm based currently). Most people I've consulted with advise me to invest in learning Java or other open source systems like php/RoR/python etc based on Linux instead.

I wanted to know how if there's any truth to the advise ? How is the job market for .net stack ? Are there good enough startups using the MS stack or is it limited mostly to enterprises ? Apart from India, I would be interested to know the status of the overall .net job market in US/Europe too.

9 comments

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zinssmeister
.Net is only a great stack if your focus is to contract or work for Corporations in America (mostly in the midwest and south). Europe is heavily set on PHP, some Rails and Python. The coasts in the U.S. incl. the valley are usually Rails, Django and Go.

I personally would not invest in a .Net focused education.

andrei_says_
Many financially successful companies on the enterprise level use .net.
UK-Al05
It's really popular in the uk for larger companies.
siquick
Lots of .Net jobs in Australia, I think it was on the curriculum on the CS degrees here for a while.
quickthrower2
It is smart to research before you get into it.

I am a long time .NET developer and think it is a great platform. It is probably the best mainstream language for general purpose development (your standard business web sites, desktop apps etc.).

Having said that you should pick something that is likely to get you a job. If you are based in India check out your local job market, plus jobs you can do remotely for US companies. You will probably find .NET doesn't feature much, but I would guess JS and front end skills do.

So for bread and butter to earn money I'd consider JS in your position. Even though it isn't my favourite language it would keep you in work for some time to come, and as you get more advanced you might switch to a compile-to-js language of which there are many.

maheshs
First look at the platform, I am assuming you are going to work on application which are going to work on browser.

JS and related framework (Angular, React etc) are really important and must have for job.

Now come to back-end, big enterprises use .NET as a back-end but most of the startup or tech focus companies are using open source.

Now within open source there are multiple options like Java, Python, Ruby. I would recommend python as its very easy to start and great choice for many different kind of applications like web, data science/ML/AI.

vram22
Related: How is the job and freelancing / contracting market for F#? I've been looking into it lately, and liking it. F# code is pretty concise, still readable, and it is not FP-only, supports OOP too (per what I read).
vram22
OP: My guess (anecdotal only) is that the market for .NET in India at least, should be good. Based on reading and talking to a few friends who work on it. Indian companies (except for startups) tend to adopt more of mainstream technologies, though that may be changing slowly, so Java and .NET (and other tech like Oracle, MS SQL Server, etc.) are popular.