
Ask HN: What technologies should I focus on to enhance my carreer? - boblebricoleur
I&#x27;d like your opinion about what technologies to focus on to get the best of today&#x27;s job market.<p>I&#x27;m currently a front-end web developer in France.<p>I have an experience of 3 years of web-based front-end dev. Before that, I was developping GUIs with Qt and C++ during 3 years.<p>My main skills are writing code, designing software architectures and as I&#x27;m in a small company I do a little UX work as well.<p>I have some back-end notions. I could focus on that an improve it considerably with a little time and effort, but that&#x27;s not what I like the most today.<p>I&#x27;m considering changing jobs soon. My number one concern today is money (as i&#x27;m currently looking to pay my mortgage and eat something else than bread and pasta). 
I reckon it will shift toward getting a project with a little more meaning and technical challenges in the next 2 or 3 years, when the money problem is solved.<p>What field&#x2F;technologies could be a good time investment ?
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guzamy
It would be helpful if the community here could comment about the state of
salaries in France (depending on companies/technologies/roles/years of
experience), as I noticed it is very different from the US.

I’m living in Paris and having the same concern as the OP, wondering which
technologies one could invest in to have a better pay.

I heard the best way is to do contracting, but I wonder what
prerequisites/technologies one needs to start contracting at a high rate.

~~~
Nextgrid
France is a lost cause when it comes to software engineering or even creative
jobs like design.

Salaries are low (I made the same money in London as a junior that I would in
Paris as a senior), bureaucracy and bullshit jobs are rampant - in fact,
engineers aren’t really a prestigious position and some paper-pushing idiot
delivering zero net value (besides creating work for other paper-pushers) will
end up getting more money and recognition - the entire working culture is
based on bullshit jobs, much more so than other countries and there’s always
this mindset of “us versus them” and being at odds with management, something
that ultimately leads to disaster especially in IT (I can’t imagine working if
I had to be in conflict with my line manager who’s also a senior developer and
gives me invaluable advice). Finally IT is considered as some kind of rocket
science or black magic where they require 5+ years of higher education for
anything even remotely related to IT (tech support, etc) which means getting
into the industry is very hard unless you are ready for 5 years of misery
before being able to get your dream job.

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boblebricoleur
Everything you said about the work culture, I have seen. It's both reassuring
(thinking I'm not the only one who feel that way) and depressing (because
indeed working in an environment where 90% of the energy is put into politics
to navigate to workplace is exhausting).

The second part I didn't see. A lot of colleague work without a 5+ year degree
on some technical jobs.

More, I feel that the engineering spirit has been lost in the it jobs. Working
as an engineer doesn't necessarly require a 5 year degree (it helps). I feel
there's a lot of hype around high level tools, a lot of trends and very very
few focused thinking. Most of my colleages don't seem to want to know how a
computer works or how their framework is implemented. When something doesn't
work as expected I see a lot of panicked faces, very few focused ones.

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sXule
React, Vue, and Angular are the big front-end frameworks right now. React is
on top currently, but I think Vue will take over the industry within the next
couple years. Angular seems to be going away. Most developers I talk to say
they want to like it, but it's just too hard to work with in comparison to Vue
or React.

A good place to start would be to learn GatsbyJS. It's a "static" site
generator using React. It's super fast and easy to get started. Gridsome is
the Vue alternative, but it's not quite as polished as Gatsby.

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petoskystone
Focus on your communication skills. I've worked at three start ups in the
states and I can tell you that those who get promotions or more salary almost
always are good communicators. Not always is it your hard skills that advance
your career

~~~
boblebricoleur
I hear that advice a lot. Seems to be consistent with what I see happening
around me.

What kind of skills in particular would you recommend to work on and how does
one go about improving said skills ?

~~~
petoskystone
In would recommend two things 1) learn to negotiate 2) take an improv acting
class. These classes help you learn to connect with others and read them
better

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sbfeibish
Money goes where it's treated best. Why don't you go where you're treated
best. You obviously have a good command of the English language. So you're not
limited to France, Quebec, ...

~~~
rchaud
He mentioned that he has a mortgage, so moving is probably not an option for
him at this time.

~~~
deepaksurti
Why not? He can still move while putting up his mortgaged property on rent.

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kbo
The best advice I can give you is to start learning Salesforce. There is a
high demand for Salesforce developers right know in France.

In Paris, you can easily get a job with 55K€ as a Salesforce developer after 2
years of experience. A confirmed developer (4 to 5 years) can earn 65K€
without any problem.

Salesforce provides a lot of content and training to be a Salesforce
developer:
[https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/for...](https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/force_com_dev_beginner)

PS: I am the CEO of a small company and we are looking for people who want to
learn Salesforce and to be a Salesforce developer. If you’re interested, send
me an email at hello@bluefactory.io

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blc56
Background: I am French from a small town, came to college in the US after
high school and now working as a back-end dev.

As some others mentioned, France is not the best when it comes to tech
salaries. That being said, if you want to make more money, you will either
have to prove that you can bring more value or build something of your own. If
you feel limited by the market in France, then a few US companies will be
interested in hiring you as a contractor. You will then have to pay a bunch of
taxes you didn't know about in France but your cash inflow will increase if
you price yourself right.

In terms of technology, what everyone looks for is a general understanding of
software (architecture, algorithms, data structure, etc) and then mastery in
one or more languages. I'd recommend looking into a functional language
(Scala, Elixir etc) to broaden your thinking as well.

~~~
boblebricoleur
> In terms of technology, what everyone looks for is a general understanding
> of software (architecture, algorithms, data structure, etc)

I'm glad to read that. I focus a lot on those aspects of the job, and I think
that they are very important to produce good work. These are the aspect of the
job I love most. Interviewers around here (south of france) don't seem to be
interested in that. They tend to ask very specific questions about languages
or framework instead.

~~~
blc56
I interviewed with a few French companies over a year ago in the case that I
might have to move back home. I believe it is starting to change. Your
experience is pretty reflective of what I heard from others as well.

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lildoggo
As others have said, React is absolutely littered across tech positions right
now.. Moreover, full stack development is huge right now - become familiar
with RESTful API's, both creating them and interfacing with them in some
popular language (python, nodejs, plain javascript, golang, etc).

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soneca
For the next 2 or 3 years on frontend? Definitely React. Without a doubt.

I am from Brazil and I am looking for a job right now in the US or remote. The
sheer quantity of React positions everywhere makes it a certainty that the
best time investment right now is React. Not a single doubt in my mind that
this is true for the next 2-3 years.

But don't neglect some fundamentals that count a lot for the best paying jobs.
Back-end knowledge is one. It will be valuable for employers to know about at
least one back-end for web tech (Rails, Django...), good SQL skills, some
basic devops knowledge like continuous integration configuration, strong
Javascript, etc.

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connorcodes
I hear it's hot to make Alexa, etc apps. It's a free dev service, it only
takes a background in node.js (lots of courses on that) and an idea (who
knows, maybe a calendar app?)

To make money on it you can make a pro plan.

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thiago_fm
Berlin is a nice city, with still more disposable income for devs than the
rest of Europe.

just saying

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nip
Tallinn is better in that regard.

Salaries range from 1500 to 5000€ netto per month (or « super net » for french
HNers reading this comment) for an average rent of 600€.

~~~
thiago_fm
Berlin rent is a little bit higher, but so is salary.

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erkanerol
I would say PHP. When everyboby is learning Go or React or k8s and when
millions of websites are still running with PHP, it may be a very rare skill
in the future :)

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wprapido
React, Vue, Angular are a good fit with your current frontend experience.

