What areas of tech involve the least churn?

2 points by collyw 11y ago ↗ HN

I am a full stack developer for 12 years. Database based applications mainly, but a bit of everything.

I am not sure if its because I have been learning more front end stuff the last few years, but the tech industry has a horrible faddish, fashion element to it. Now that I feel that I am pretty good at SQL, NoSQL is what all the job offers want. I get better at HTML, everyone wants native apps. Learn Django and everyone says Nodejs is amazing.

I can't help thinking that most of the time the choices are no better, if not worse than what I know (obviously internally I may be trying to defend the effort I have put in). Rather than learn yet another new framework or semantics of another NoSQL database, I would prefer to build on the skills I have.

What areas of the tech are more stable, or at least don't have the faddish nature associated with them? Does lower level stuff change much?

2 comments

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begriffs 11y ago ↗

Data science perhaps, since it is more math-heavy.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago ↗

I'd say stuff like device driver and kernel work, embedded as well.

That's quite different from what you've been doing, but if you've been a coder of any sort for 12 years, I expect you could learn driver coding without too much trouble.

I have the same observation as you of the industry. I'm not so enthusiastic about learning today's buzzword, rather I'm looking for ways to get away both from employment and consulting by starting my own business of some sort.

My contemplations mostly involve crowdfunding; I'm not yet sure what kind of project I would seek crowdfunding for, but lately I've been studying how it's done. I have some reason to believe I would succeed.

For several years now I've noticed that the instant I walk into an interview, the interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me. I expect that's because I have grey hair.