Ask HN: Will I miss out on the window of opportunity?

4 points by broodje 9 years ago | 5 comments

Hi guys, I'm pretty early on in my development towards becoming a competent member of the tech industry with aspirations to eventually become a web developer.

My other passion in life is skiing and as it currently stands, I'll be off to Canada for the 18'/19' season to get my instructors licence.

At the moment I'm running through the Udacity Front-End nanodegree and am wondering if, due to taking a few years out to pursue instructing, I'll miss my opportunity to join the industry as I feel it will be fairly saturated by that point.

What are your thoughts on this situation oh knowledgeable ones?

patio11 9 years ago |

I'll miss my opportunity to join the industry as I feel it will be fairly saturated by that point.

I'd take the other side of that bet. AppAmaGooFaceSoft have not found a number of developers X such that having X,000 of them around is enough to ship as many products as they hope to ship. I ballpark their combined engineering teams at +/- 100,000 people; there is no obvious reason why it is not 200,000. (I'd note that if you're not forecasting growth in developer headcount across the industry you should probably be forecasting contraction rather than statis, and if contraction happens one would generally assume it hits the most recent employees first, so your course of action is invariant regardless of whether you're directionally right on the industry's growth story.)

I'd encourage you to not pigeonhole yourself as a "web" or "front-end" developer. You solve business problems; a computer is often involved. If you need a new tool in the toolbox most of the relevant ones take single-digit weeks or less to be commercially proficient in, particularly at the early stages of your career, when coming from any meaningful degree of engineering expertise.

qwrusz 9 years ago |

No. In tech, the only windows to worry about is the one made by Microsoft.

Ski Instruction has been around even longer than the tech industry, did you miss out on the window of opportunity to become a ski instructor due to saturation?...

franze 9 years ago |

Do both! Stop watching TV & quit alcohol and other time wasters, then you have time for both. Don't limit yourself by believing you can only learn one thing at one time.

jcahill84 9 years ago |

I don't think the tech industry will ever be saturated, especially where software is concerned. Ski all day and read/code all night! You'll be fine.

boyanpro 9 years ago |

If you miss coding for month or two you will need to start over. It's not like learning skiing. You have to sharpen your coding skills on a daily basis.