Most marketable Software Engineering skill to switch to?

Question

One of my peers who reluctantly entered management is very technically capable, but an expert of an older platform. He is planning to get back into the Software Engineering side of things, and asked for my opinion on the most marketable platform to be an expert of for the next few years.

I'm a Microsoft expert, so I offered up specialization in the .NET platform and Sharepoint, which can be very intellectually rewarding and pays well.

However, I wanted to offer some other visionary insight into emerging platforms. What other platforms would you consider, that meet the listed requirements?

Answer 1

Concurrency, dynamic languages, and development with distributed teams.

Expertise in concurrency is going to become very hot as people see their 8/16/32-core machines not performing vastly faster than their circa 2006 machines.

Dynamic languages and high-productivity frameworks (e.g., Rails, ASP.NET MVC) are easy bets for increasing demand.

But like it or not, your friend's expertise with management is going to be his most marketable skill.

Answer 2

Java and SQL are still a valid and sought after skill sets.

Cloud computing and virtualization have a lot of buzz right now and depending on the company may be essential for saving on server costs. This knowledge should include both when to use and when not to use these technologies.

I also agree that the dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python and PHP are valuable when paired with high-productivity frameworks like Rails and Django.

Scalability and performance is also very important for web developers. You may not have to scale now but when you're site is successful, how are you going to handle it?

Process-wise, having up to date knowledge about Agile development methodologies will be helpful in many situations. I think the management experience plus an interest in agile development could be useful. But it all depends on the hiring company.

In the end, he should probably consider the types of companies he is interested in and find out what skill sets they are looking for and develop those skills.

Answer 3

For your question it doesn't matter what's most profitable now, it matters what will be most profitable a year from now. The best predictors are working in the financial industry. The worst predictors are working in the financial industry. Go for the middle.

Answer 4

Proven ability to deliver completed projects.

Answer 5

I created this list from Elance.com, which gives a good idea currently in-demand skills: http://www.elance.com/skills_directory

Top 10 from Web & Programming, number of active jobs in parenthesis:

1 - SQL (13885) / MySQL (9259)
2 - PHP (13030)
3 - .NET (9756)
4 - C (9595)
5 - HTML (9525)
6 - Java (9393)
7 - CSS (8157)
8 - ASP (7468)
9 - JavaScript (6895)
10 - Flash (6676)