How to decide what skills to focus on so as not to become obsolete in next 5 - 10 years?
I am a frontend focused full-stack engineer with 7 years of relevant experience in the frontend engineering space and a total of 12 years of experience. I am not able to decide where should I invest my time when working on side projects. Should I start picking up mobile(Android/iOS) or continue to sharpen my skills in the frontend development space? To put it another way, should I invest my time in going depth in my current domain or should I invest time learning mobile UI development as that has gained more traction and is viewed as more valuable skill?
I think I am unable to decide whether to go about developing my skills in breadth or depth.
Discussion
(4 comments)
15 days agoStaff Eng @ Google, Ex-Meta SWE, Ex-Amazon SDM/SDEYou should invest in growing your ability to handle greater complexity and more ambiguity. You should invest in growing soft skills, decomposing work streams, mentorship, and other soft skills.
In 5 years whatever tech you invest in will have changed dramatically. How you manage complexity, ambiguity and interpersonal communication won’t.
10 Likes- 15 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I love Lee's answer. Focus on the skills that will never go out of style (that's what we built Taro for!). I promise that the next ML technique, JavaScript framework, and even mobile development space has a pretty short half-life.
Instead of thinking about your career 10 years from now, I'd work forward from what you enjoy doing and where you have a unique insight for the next 6 months or year. The world will be very different in 10 years.
See also this very relevant video about Why It Doesn’t Make Sense To Have a 5 Year Career Plan.
Steve Huynh had some great advice about managing your career: https://www.jointaro.com/topic/steve-huynh/
4 Likes 
15 days agoStartup Engineer@Rahul, I so much want to see the full interview with Steve... Someone suggested a Slack channel purely for videos/resources to share. Since that is only available for premium members, I would love to see the minimally edited version 🙏
2 Likes- 15 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
@Michael, the video with Steve is coming out on YouTube in ~6 hours!! (This is the highly edited / polished version.) And I'll also be adding that in Taro for an ad-free viewing experience.
The ones you see on Taro with the Steve Huynh tag are minimally edited, and I'll add more here in the coming days.
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