Do what you love.
Don’t worry about the rest. It’s so easy in tech to fall in the expert trap and stop learning, only to wake up 10 years later, laid off with no prospects. Over the past years, you became an expert… but… most technologies don’t last as long as your career.
The good news is you can be an expert and avoid the trap:
- Never stop learning. Always find time to lean something BRAND NEW. Not new-ish, but buggy and rough edges new. Pick tech with a great team or company backing it.
- Realize that most projects start with cutting-edge technology, and over time, become “proven” and then “the old way”. Yes, the proven, old way may be better at this moment, but the reason the cutting-edge new is selected for new projects is they have the potential to do more, faster, and safer than the old over the life of the project.
- Be a generalist first, then a specialist. I’m a developer first, and an expert on serverless second. I see being a developer as my professional identity.