How to choose specialty?

You should expect technology to change. Avoid becoming too reliant on a specific language or framework. There are nuances to this:

• I am a gradle build engineer ❌ this is way too narrow, using just one type of build system in Android.
• I am an Android build engineer ❌ this is better since you're not tied to gradle but still too narrow since you're only useful to larger Android apps, where build times are painful.
• I am an Android engineer ❌ this is better, but even this is risky if Android apps get vibe coded or get automated by AI.
• I am a mobile engineer 😕 I have higher conviction that some form of mobile software dev will stick around.
• I am a product engineer ✅ Products aren't going away anytime, so if you frame your role as someone who just builds products, you have the ultimate job security.

Instead of thinking about your career 10 years from now, 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. Tactically, I have two pieces of advice:

• Focus on the skills that will never go out of style (that's what we built Taro for!).
• Think about the smartest people you can work with, and just copy them. Learn the tools and languages they're learning. Because they're so smart, you'll automatically work on interesting problems that are valuable to companies.

See also this very relevant video from an Amazon Principal Eng about Why It Doesn’t Make Sense To Have a 5 Year Career Plan.

To have a great career with 7-figure income, you have to specialize.

Just not in the way that you mean.

Let's take Meta's IC7+ engineering archetypes:

• Generalist
• Specialist
• Coding Machine
• Tech Lead
• Fixer
• Systems Thinker
• Product Hybrid

According to levels.fyi, these engineers make $1.34M per year on average.

The existence of the whole "archetype" concept itself is a clear hint that specialization matters. It's just not specialization in a certain technical stack. That thinking will point you in the wrong direction.

You should specialize by how you deliver Impact.

And this depends 100% on your strengths.

Your strengths are what you are good at, and what fills you with energy (as opposed to drain you).

So my advice?

Figure out what type of work you love doing. Then specialize in how to leverage this type of work to deliver outsized Impact.