A very strange thing happened in the mid 90's. Software Engineering fell out of favor at major universities across the U.S. About 10 years later at a Microsoft conference I attended they spoke about the upcoming shortage of software engineers.

Couple that with the demand of today's smart end users, and we now have a very good situation for Software Engineers. A demand as never before.

Golden Handcuffs

Is a term used for those of us who feel comfortable in our current position. We don't feel the need to continually improve. Our salary is acceptable, we love our environment, our manager is great!

The problem is, our skills are in an exponential decline. Golden Handcuffs are a sure way to become unmarketable. It allows us to ignore the advances in Software Engineering.

What Color is Your Parachute

The infamous book's "What Color is your Parachute" most profound advice may be paraphrased:

"If you aren't adding new skills every 6 months to your resume, you will be driven out of the market".

Who Moved My Cheese

Is an expose on the fast changing world.

We must learn to accept change and make the best of it.

Enough on the theory stuff, don't waste too much time with these books until you are in a job and want to start long term planning.

Stay Focused

Software Engineers are saddled with frequent interruptions. They come from every angle : Managers, Business Analysts, Peers, Scrum Masters, Project Managers, Product Owners.

The Agile Manifesto attempts to address this problem by defining a stay focused methodology. While not perfect, it's better than the way things were using SDLC.

Become a part of the Demand

Go to Stack Overflow look up React, how many questions did you see? How about Azure? or GraphQL? Then Look at JavaScript and or Typescript. Now compare these to Java and C#. See any trends?

The top 4 Languages

Here's the top 4 languages by number of questions on Stack Overflow

The good news is that if you know JavaScript, learning Typescript is easy. If you know Java, learning C# is easy.

Most Loved Frameworks

The Stack Overflow developer survey of 2020 listed these web frameworks as most loved by 'Professional Developers':

Cloud Revenue for 2020

Microservices are going to become a major disrupter to how things are done. They will displace Express and ASP.NET.

Top Skills to learn today

React and GraphQL, JavaScript and Azure are the top skills to learn today.

Stay focused and study 8 to 10 hours a day and weekends too. Make yourself sick of studying.

This is the fastest way to be "In Demand"

JWP2021 Software Engineering