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Comment by fsk | Hacker News Reader

>I don't know what's in demand. What can people still turn in to a long-term career? What area or "discipline" in IT shows promise for a career?

Here's one rule of thumb I've been using to gauge demand. If someone's willing to hire you to use a tool even though you haven't really used it before, then the demand is there.

Another warning is that what's hot now may not be hot 5 years from now. iOS is hot right now. I'm concerned that, with Steve Jobs gone, Apple is going to implode and lose their market share. So there may be no iOS jobs 5 years from now.

Just keep sending out resumes. You'll find something eventually. It's just a numbers game.

Do you have any savings? If not, get whatever you can right now to get back. Be prepared to take something lousy and be looking to jump to something better.

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Apple is too large to implode and fail quickly. Even if they do fail it will be a slow death or just a leveling off. Look at Microsoft. The last ~10 years they been getting beaten in many large markets they are entering, but they are still a massive player.

There's no way Blackberry could lose their market share. Even if they do fail it would be slowly or a leveling off. There's no way they could go from the leader to zero in 5 years.

Apple has $180Billion in cash. The total it spends on employees is $18Billion per year. So, in essence Apple could pay its employees just to sit around and not sell a single product for 10 years before running out of cash.

Ponder that. Apple is nothing like Blackberry. Your example is totally ridiculous.

> I'm concerned that, with Steve Jobs gone, Apple is going to implode and lose their market share. So there may be no iOS jobs 5 years from now.

They won't. Apple's vertical integration gives them a UI advantage. 'Normals' like easy-to-use things.

Techs like easy-to-use things too. I've got 15+ years IT background, but I use Apple phones specifically because they get out of my way and just work for everything I want a smartphone to do.

I don't have to tweak, I don't have to customize and I don't have to fix. Also they have a sane approach to bugfixes and security. Sure, it's not an open platform, but Android isn't really either. I don't have time to care, I've got work to do.

Good point.

There are definitely some people who tolerate less polish[0]... I think I've made a category error!

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

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