Should I focus on common or niche skills to get a job?

4 points by hackerbabz 6y ago ↗ HN

I can take a year off to learn new languages/skills. Will I have more success if I focus on rare languages or common ones?

I’m an American expat living in Asia. I work remotely as a web developer for an American company, but I want to quit and find a new job.

I am not the most attractive employee because I am 14 timezones from PST. Will learning a language like Elixir get me a new job faster than than a mass appeal one like Java?

1 comment

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moonsly 6y ago ↗

You could look through language ratings like this https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

And choose some new language which is not loosing its market share (like Java, PHP or Perl), but growing now (like Python, Go). Also the best way to switch to new language - is to choose some similar language to the one you used recently, like PHP -> Python or Python -> Go.

Anyway, good luck in your career!