I'd like your opinion about what technologies to focus on to get the best of today's job market.<p>I'm currently a front-end web developer in France.<p>I have an experience of 3 years of web-based front-end dev. Before that, I was developping GUIs with Qt and C++ during 3 years.<p>My main skills are writing code, designing software architectures and as I'm in a small company I do a little UX work as well.<p>I have some back-end notions. I could focus on that an improve it considerably with a little time and effort, but that's not what I like the most today.<p>I'm considering changing jobs soon. My number one concern today is money (as i'm currently looking to pay my mortgage and eat something else than bread and pasta).
I reckon it will shift toward getting a project with a little more meaning and technical challenges in the next 2 or 3 years, when the money problem is solved.<p>What field/technologies could be a good time investment ?
It would be helpful if the community here could comment about the state of salaries in France (depending on companies/technologies/roles/years of experience), as I noticed it is very different from the US.<p>I’m living in Paris and having the same concern as the OP, wondering which technologies one could invest in to have a better pay.<p>I heard the best way is to do contracting, but I wonder what prerequisites/technologies one needs to start contracting at a high rate.
React, Vue, and Angular are the big front-end frameworks right now. React is on top currently, but I think Vue will take over the industry within the next couple years. Angular seems to be going away. Most developers I talk to say they want to like it, but it's just too hard to work with in comparison to Vue or React.<p>A good place to start would be to learn GatsbyJS. It's a "static" site generator using React. It's super fast and easy to get started. Gridsome is the Vue alternative, but it's not quite as polished as Gatsby.
Focus on your communication skills. I've worked at three start ups in the states and I can tell you that those who get promotions or more salary almost always are good communicators. Not always is it your hard skills that advance your career
Money goes where it's treated best. Why don't you go where you're treated best. You obviously have a good command of the English language. So you're not limited to France, Quebec, ...
The best advice I can give you is to start learning Salesforce. There is a high demand for Salesforce developers right know in France.<p>In Paris, you can easily get a job with 55K€ as a Salesforce developer after 2 years of experience. A confirmed developer (4 to 5 years) can earn 65K€ without any problem.<p>Salesforce provides a lot of content and training to be a Salesforce developer: <a href="https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/force_com_dev_beginner" rel="nofollow">https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/for...</a><p>PS: I am the CEO of a small company and we are looking for people who want to learn Salesforce and to be a Salesforce developer. If you’re interested, send me an email at hello@bluefactory.io
Background: I am French from a small town, came to college in the US after high school and now working as a back-end dev.<p>As some others mentioned, France is not the best when it comes to tech salaries. That being said, if you want to make more money, you will either have to prove that you can bring more value or build something of your own. If you feel limited by the market in France, then a few US companies will be interested in hiring you as a contractor. You will then have to pay a bunch of taxes you didn't know about in France but your cash inflow will increase if you price yourself right.<p>In terms of technology, what everyone looks for is a general understanding of software (architecture, algorithms, data structure, etc) and then mastery in one or more languages. I'd recommend looking into a functional language (Scala, Elixir etc) to broaden your thinking as well.
As others have said, React is absolutely littered across tech positions right now.. Moreover, full stack development is huge right now - become familiar with RESTful API's, both creating them and interfacing with them in some popular language (python, nodejs, plain javascript, golang, etc).
For the next 2 or 3 years on frontend? Definitely React. Without a doubt.<p>I am from Brazil and I am looking for a job right now in the US or remote. The sheer quantity of React positions everywhere makes it a certainty that the best time investment right now is React. Not a single doubt in my mind that this is true for the next 2-3 years.<p>But don't neglect some fundamentals that count a lot for the best paying jobs. Back-end knowledge is one. It will be valuable for employers to know about at least one back-end for web tech (Rails, Django...), good SQL skills, some basic devops knowledge like continuous integration configuration, strong Javascript, etc.
I hear it's hot to make Alexa, etc apps. It's a free dev service, it only takes a background in node.js (lots of courses on that) and an idea (who knows, maybe a calendar app?)<p>To make money on it you can make a pro plan.
I would say PHP. When everyboby is learning Go or React or k8s and when millions of websites are still running with PHP, it may be a very rare skill in the future :)