Have you ever been afraid your current tech stack at work will limit your career options in the future?

In my first job out of college, I was working with the MERN stack. Back then, I was devouring any content about software development on YouTube. 90% of it was pretty much about JavaScript, and it always felt kind of relevant to my work. The other 10% was about some new language or framework that almost no one used besides Fireship or ThePrimeagen.

At one point, I switched to Java, writing backend APIs. You see, I had this morning ritual after coming in to work. I would open Hacker News and quickly scan the front page to find anything relevant to my current language/framework. Days went by. Not a single article about Java.

You can imagine how discouraging it was for a junior developer when he found nobody wrote about Java. A new Spring Boot version announced on Hacker News? 3 comments. There were no Medium spam posts like “5 Maven tricks” anywhere to be found. I was afraid of being pigeon-holed in the Java ecosystem and its effect on my future prospects.

Whatever, I told myself, when I switch jobs, I will find work with more popular and “better” technologies.

After a long job-hunting process, I found something very peculiar. Java jobs were ahead of the competition in terms of money and benefits.

Why was the best work in Java, when almost no one on the internet seems to care? It’s like there is a secret cabal of stable companies making money, not caring about current trends.

I think Java right now is in an interesting place, the kind of place where mature technologies go after they have had a good run for a decade or two.

I think I have been stressing about it for no good reason. It’s hard to make a bad decision in this career. After all, the richest developers I know are working with early 2000s tech.

I am writing this blog post after I officially became a homeowner thanks to Java. Here’s to another 5 billion devices, I guess. Maybe it will pay off my kids’ college tuition as well.