But the point is that you never sure what is the next thing the management will decide to use . Sure if you young you can spend your lonely nights and weekend hacking Clojure or Scala but in the end of day your boss will decide on retarded Java framework bla bla technology and all you hours were just for nothing. And anyways when you have friends,girlfriend/wife and kids it becomes very difficult to spend enough time jumping from one cool tech to another.
Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status .
All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE).
In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)
The silent point I was getting at was not to stay in dead end jobs. Keeping your skills up to date doesn't mean learning new tech in your spare time while pounding out COBOL at your workplace : it means making sure the projects and technologies you're working on are current and on trend with the future. If this means moving jobs every couple of years, then do it. If it means leaving the cube farm and starting out on your own, even better.
Some of my non-comp-sci friends and some programmer friends say that software development is like prostitution the older you get the less money you make until you are discarded , unlike for example accountant who starts low but steadily reaches some status . All of these "rockstars" and start-up founders can be imagined as elite prostitutes who just look better and do it better for more money of course, can retire early and may be score a picture on tabloid with some politician and then make a million bucks (EXPOSURE). In the end we are just slaves of capitalist system whatever we admit it or not ( most of the time our brainwashing won't allow us to do it)