
Ask HN: Will I miss out on the window of opportunity? - broodje
Hi guys, I&#x27;m pretty early on in my development towards becoming a competent member of the tech industry with aspirations to eventually become a web developer.<p>My other passion in life is skiing and as it currently stands, I&#x27;ll be off to Canada for the 18&#x27;&#x2F;19&#x27; season to get my instructors licence.<p>At the moment I&#x27;m running through the Udacity Front-End nanodegree and am wondering if, due to taking a few years out to pursue instructing, I&#x27;ll miss my opportunity to join the industry as I feel it will be fairly saturated by that point.<p>What are your thoughts on this situation oh knowledgeable ones?
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patio11
_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.

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qwrusz
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?...

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franze
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.

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jcahill84
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.

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boyanpro
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.

