Many times people say if you don’t do this you are going to miss the boat. Often that is a helpful thing.
Why do I say this? There were times in my IT career that I thought about what was a popular technology at the time and I didn’t see that it had a future. I didn’t study it because it didn’t seem long a helpful investment of my time.
For example with Novell Networks. Very popular, but I knew it wasn’t going to outcompete Microsoft. Lotus, VMWare, WordPerfect, Unix. All of those were very popular but I could see the writing on the wall. This isn’t to glorify me, but rather I always asked myself is this technology at its peak or is there room to grow.
We have to try to look to the future and ask ourselves, am I investing in skills that are going to be in demands or not? I have had the good fortune to have opportunities to grow and so I did. I only share this because you too can position yourself with a job where you can continue to grow your skill set. This helps everyone.
Invest your time not only in what you are interested in, but where you think the market is going. I have said before that I think the market is moving away from Microsoft. Yes Azure and other MS services are still very profitable, but their base is eroding and they know it. I have said before that I see Linux/mac as the future, and I suspect Linux will take over the mac at some point. Yes that sound ridiculous now, but we will see. I think that the days of proprietary hardware/software are going to end and the world will demand open architecture.
What we have learned is that companies do what is in their best interests, and now people are realizing that and doing what is in their best interests. That is, to use things that allow them to repair and control how their information is shared.
You can miss the boat and have a more helpful and peaceful life than the people who rode the wave of popularity.