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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Technology is a brutal industry for those that fall off the leading edge. Anyone who's considering going into it should know that.

It's often worth it to have periodic career breaks simply to refresh your skillset. Found a startup in whatever the hottest area is. Take on a side project to teach yourself something knew. Switch to a new job working on hipper technologies.

But if you're expecting to gradually keep your head down and put in your 40 hours a week at the same employer for the next ten years, you're going to be disappointed. Basically everything you started out knowing will be obsolete by then.

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Exactly. Really the article is about paying more for more skilled developers (or at least, ones with skills that you need) rather than just senior vs. junior.

IMO, both the employer and developer are to blame in the scenario given. The developer hasn't kept his skills current, sure, but also the employer/customer requires the new hotness by next week and nobody has thought to train any of their existing developers in it (and end up paying a 130% premium).

The developer hasn't kept his skills current

This comment and similar comments I've seen on this post seem to be implying that every developer needs to continuously be learning the latest technology/platform -- in this case mobile.

I really don't think that makes sense. Technology is way too diverse to expect everyone to know everything. Do you think every web developer needs to be able to develop iPhone apps (and vice versa) ?

It seems to me that the post has more to do with the employer discovering an inconsistency in the way they were evaluating the value of their employees. Is the mobile developer really generating more value for the company than the backend/customer logic guy with 10 years experience. I doubt it, and judging by the outcome the manager seems to agree.

implying that every developer needs to continuously be learning the latest technology/platform

Generally speaking the idea behind that sentiment is that a ASP.NET MVC dev should keep up with MVC3 and Razor. That Rails devs should keep up with Rails 3. That Javascript devs should keep up with Node.js and the plethora or new libraries/frameworks coming out. Sure you might know a gazillion languages, but the only real requirement is to keep up with the developments of the technologies you need NOW.

I agree that no developer should be expected to know everything, nevertheless he/she should be able to pick up anything fast and easy. It is my firm belief that people should be paid by the value they provide, instead of the technologies they're well versed in.

On another note, I'm by no means a genius rocket scientist turned developer, but in the last 6 years I went from implementing complex E-Commerce Java backends, to front end development and design, to Php app dev, back to Java, to Rails webapps, to system administration and some Python dev, to (right now) Asp MVC and C# dev. I've been using Visual Studio (which I had never used) in a virtual machine running Windows (which I last used when XP came out circa late 2001), and I was productive within the first 2 or 3 days from when I started. Sure I'm a lot better now - 2 weeks into the job, but any developer worth his salt could have tackled the "mobile dev" stuff that the author of the main article was referring to in two or three weeks of training/tinkering. The problem these days are the business types hiring people because they've used some cool new tech, instead of hiring based on trajectory, experience, and perceived value.

I completely agree with you, I've always been much of a generalist myself and after a while you realize that the fundamental patterns of technology remain fairly constant, only the details change.

It's just that there's a difference between being able to learn new technologies and feeling like you have to. Good developers certainly have high learning capacity but none of us has infinite learning capacity. My concern is that given the pace of technological change we create (or are forced to create) unrealistic expectations of ourselves. If the lead developer on an ongoing successful product is made to feel that he needs to learn mobile development, I think that maybe crossing a line (of course everything depends on the exact circumstances, if the product were stable and the mobile interface was all that remained to be done it might be a different story).

Well the thing is... a company needs to have employees that create value for itself.

I was once in the position of telling an employer that he was wrong to want to hire an extra Rails dev when we had a front end guy that had little work at the time and had the drive and fast learning capability to learn it in a week or two, at least to decent productive standards. The new hire was a disaster, and three months later was replaced by the guy that I said we could train. For more money than the new hire.

A lead developer should not be expected to know everything, but he needs to know how to solve problems, regardless of the medium, and regardless of the programming language. A lead developer should not only be expected to get into mobile development when required, but he should also be involved in the effort to pursue said mobile solution.

From what I can tell after the little iPhone boomlet subsided there's not a whole lot of money in mobile apps. How many minecrafts are there, really, out there?

Mobile is no longer a gold rush where you can get money for putting out any random crap, but, there is still plenty of money to be made.

There is a market in developing mobile software as part of a general mobile platform. Making the mobile app for salesforce.com and what not. Also a good majority of smartphone users don't really pick up on the apps and are starting to get more into customizing their cellphone and what not, there is a wave on the horizon of smart phone users using their phones more and getting apps and what not.

The money in mobile apps sold through the app store to the general public, might be subsiding. But I believe the money in industry specific, in house apps designed to run on tablet like devices of various sizes is just starting to pick up.

No developer can be across everything, but you do need to be learning a latest technology though, if only so that you can get a decent raise by either inflating your market rate, or by jumping ship when the pay difference gets too great.

The other option is to get a greater depth in one of your current skills so that you can be a 'guru of X', but you'll probably still want to have broad knowledge in related areas (eg. a guru web dev will need HTML, CSS, databases, Analytics, AJAX, etc.)

Well actually it was much worse then that, the most jr member of the team was making 30% more then the lead as a FTE. When that comes to light it is a big problem, its the kind of thing that makes the team quit if it goes bad. As was said elsewhere contractor makes sense here, the skill will not be scarce in 6 months so buy it for 6 months at a premium.

True, and technology is far from the worst field in that respect. Professional sports or modeling are two professions in which you will lose your value no matter what you do. You have a limited shelf life and you have to make the best out of the years you have.

As a developer you at least have a choice. It's possible to earn a living as a software developer in your 50s or 60s, I've met a few.

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