
Ask HN: What technology earned you the most money? - tonteldoos
Hi HNers,<p>We all know what technologies (hardware, software, etc) is popular based on TIOBE, StackOverflow surveys, news, etc.<p>However, in your career, what technology has actually earned you the most money?  This can be hardware, software, systems, over contract jobs, fulltime employment, or side projects.  It could even be a niche product.<p>By &#x27;most money&#x27;, I don&#x27;t necessarily mean as an absolute amount - it could also be on a per hour, or per project and time spent on the project.<p>Surprise us!
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itamarst
I don't think it's a specific technology that made me the most money. Rather,
skills like the demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly has
been far more useful. In particular I have been hired at jobs where I knew
neither the domain nor much of the technology stack.

In general I think programmers overestimate the value of knowing specific
technologies, and underestimate other skills (for example, more here on how
productivity takes far more than knowledge of technology:
[https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-
pro...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-
productive/)).

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SirLJ
Stock brokers providing APIs - this is the best since sliced bread, because I
can automate my hobby (stock trading) and make more money than my regular job
with very little overhead...

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gvajravelu
Like itamarst said, it wasn't a technology for me either. Instead I got a 33%
raise for applying my existing C++ skills to some finance knowledge I learned
over a year.

Basically, I learned a key part of our industry, built some software that
helps the business operate, and got a raise after it was successfully running
in production. It certainly helped that the software increased the company's
profits and I was the only engineer in the company with that industry
knowledge.

It actually pretty easy to figure out what skills will help you earn more
money. Go on Glassdoor or Indeed and look at technology jobs in your industry.
Then see which departments pay what salaries. Try to learn the skills for the
high paying departments so you can build the technology for that department:
[http://www.climbuptheladder.com/how-to-know-if-youre-paid-
wh...](http://www.climbuptheladder.com/how-to-know-if-youre-paid-what-youre-
worth/).

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muzani
Android.

Though a lot of the work I do is "full stack", Android is what earns me the
jobs.

Biggest income source was selling an app startup, where 90% of the work was
Android.

That event also highly accelerated my career. Got some CTO jobs and teaching
jobs after that. Most of the work after that was fairly trivial, but the hook
was my Android ability in all those opportunities.

I had a lot of contracts fail because the team I joined were not competent in
APIs so I wonder if things would have turned out better if I was better with
setting up APIs.

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AlexAmee
> Surprise us!

The Spring framework is my cashcow.

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andrei_says_
Critical thinking, vbscript, SCSS, Ruby, Rails, Flash ActionScript (!), JS,
Photoshop, Lightroom, my camera, lenses, and strobes, Nonviolent
Communication.

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thijsvandien
Does Google count? A lot of my income is based on the simple fact that I know
better than my clients how to use a search engine.

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cm2012
Facebook ads, since I can use them to make clients money.

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malux85
Python, pandas, tensorflow, SignalBox (my own creation)

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taway_1212
Big Data stack (Hadoop, Spark, Kafka etc.)

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billconan
being a fluent c++ programer I think.

it helped me quickly adopt other technologies.

