I remember getting a 20% raise in my salary after 3 months of self studying node.js with couple online courses. Self learning is a crucial part of being a software developer.
🤔What skills can optimize your market value as a developer in 2020?
I have curated a list of emerging dev skills based on data insights from StackOverflow developer survey, Indeed and RemoteOk and Linkedin.
1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS emerged as the most diverse and widely adopted cloud service among many companies. Big, small alike most companies are moving to cloud from on prem. Moreover, many larger organizations are concerned with scaling than ever before. AWS being of the major cloud provider in the space there is a huge demand for developers with AWS skills.
2. React.js
React.js has surpassed all the other modern frontend framework in 2019 and it is growing. Backed by Facebook and trusted by some of the industry giants React is becoming the framework that everyone loves. React has a solid community behind it and has introduced some great features like hooks in 2019 that accelerated its popularity. The demand for good react developers will continue to rise in 2020. If you are already familiar with React it would be a good idea to learn some of the other tools in the ecosystem such as GraphQL, SSR etc.
Want to know what's new with javascript in 2020? Check this post out
3. GO
Google’s GO language is gaining popularity. There are tons of remote companies that are actively looking for GO developers in North America and Europe. If you are already proficient with either one of Node.js, Ruby on Rails or PHP (Laravel) you should pickup GO as your second backend language of choice. If you are new to backend development, I would not recommend GO right away. I noticed most of the GO jobs listed are geared towards senior devs so it might not be very practical to learn GO as someone who is just starting out. GO is also very efficient in developing cloud native applications.
4. Redis
If you are thinking of picking up a new database/datastore to learn Redis is the way to go. StackOverflow rates Redis as most loved and rapidly growing technology.
Unlike traditional databases Redis is an in-memory data structure store. Redis is a popular choice among large scale applications and microservices as it can be easily implemented and can be used as a message broker and caching system.
5. Apache Spark
If you are already a full stack developer and looking to wet your feet in the big data field then Apache Spark will be a profitable skill to have. Data gathering and analysis is becoming crucial for many organizations. Thus demands for developers with data skills is also on the rise.
These are my top picks. Would love to hear what you think. Do you agree/disagree? Have I missed something? Let me know in the comment section. Until next time 😀
Latest comments (42)
Yes to big data!
While i agree salary negotiation skills are critical the biggest most embarrassing technical skill i see lacking in modern developers is the tools they use everyday - in particular linux, bash, vim, simple things. If all you know is a an IDE i am unimpressed. Currently i manage multiple teams.
If they manage to solve the problems at hand, why do you care if they are using git from the command-line or from the - honestly much better - interface in the IDE?
Its not about how they use git, the most common deployment platform for the languages you name and the cloud service providers in the suggested list is a linux OS. All of the products I have responsibility for are deployed in Kubernetes using a Docker container built on - you guessed it Linux.
Basically the most common building block across all of the technologies you named is that they run on top of Linux. If you don't understand the underlying platform you are deploying on then when things go wrong and a developer needs to diagnose a problem they will be incapable to do so without that basic knowledge.
It is truly like anything in life, if you don't understand the basics then your higher level skills are crippled which makes you worth less in the marketplace. In any job interview I give I ask about basic commands, if the dev doesn't know them they don't get the job.
If they are not curious about or able to learn those things, I would no thire them either.
On the other hand, truth to be told, nobody can know the basics of everything, there are certainly basic things I don't know myself as for 2020.
It's actually a success of good computer science when most people don't have to understand how things works behind the scenes, it means we manage to invent an abstraction that is not leaky.
See Conceptual compression means beginners don’t need to know SQL — hallelujah!
You can make the code, but can you communicate how it was built and why it's of value to your whole team?
I think 2020 is the year of separating those who only code and those with the ability to collaborate and code outside the dev team.
Your analysis of AWS was really good because I'm in the Bay area and I talked to a recruiter not too long ago and they don't even care if you can code but if you have any WS you just fit into so many places I would see it's better if you can but there's just a lot of support work out there with AWS managing other people's code bases so I'm trying to like really lock that down in the next month to two months
I I think I have to give it to you Shahid that's an amazing analysis I'm working to get get up to speed and all those areas and my computer just crashed so it must be a good sign.
I was thinking a bit, if „new emerging technology“ equals „salary raise“...
Here are a few meta-thoughts and questions apart from specific items of your list:
I'd say only learn something if you can somehow apply the knowledge (right now or in the foreseeable future) ... otherwise I'd call it hobby and not a professional investment.
I would actually add the challengers to this list: GCP and Vue.js. I believe they will gain more traction this year
Love your list except Apache Spark, which; I'd substitute ASP.NET core.
Thanks..and I agree maybe shouldn't have put spark now that I think of it lol. ASP.NET is an emerging beast however. I am currently learning it and I can see some disruptive things coming from Microsoft (blazor, azure .net cloud functions to name a few). Good point, I will probably write another piece about these. But definitely agree having ASP.NET core makes you a very desirable developer in the enterprise world
ASP.NET has been around for about 20 years. ASP.NET Core, its sucessor is currently on release 3.0. It brings ASP.NET to all platforms. It's currently clocking in as the fastest backend on market.
Other than Typescript and Github, ASP.NET Core is MSFT's power player for backend. They've spent huge budgets to get where they are now. I don't see it fading any time soon as the only competitor will be Node based servers. But Node may not yet be fully CPU agnostic like C#. That alone is why ASP.NET Core is a great choice.
The cons are it is not an Isomorphic Javascript solution. This is where Node shines. Some folks are saying node now has ability to use all cores on its single thread design. This will be a game changer.
I would also add Kotlin to this, not just for Android, but for backend development as well.