How often have you switched stacks in your career? Has it hurt your career progress?

Question

I started my career writing C#. However after an year I moved to Java and then after 6 months back to C# where I've been more around 3 years now.

I strongly believe that although the basic principles do not change and are reapplied learning a new stack (and the supporting frameworks) is always a big investment.

How often have you switched stacks in your career? Has it ever hurt your career progress? Do you like working with people who have worked on multiple stacks but have lesser knowledge of the respective stacks or with people who have worked on a single stack and have a deeper understanding of the ins and outs of it?

Answer 1

Switching a stacks was always an improvement in my career — this meant I was hired not just as another coder fluent in recent [insert technology here], but as a developer of a broader experience, which is going to tackle with something new and/or cross-stack. This was not always an immediate monetary gain, but always an experience gain which increased my market value as a developer. (Usually I oscillated between Oracle's PL/SQL, Java world, and Python world, with bits of C# and whatnot thrown in.)

Unless you're hired for a completely new project, you will always invest serious time into learning its existing unique codebase and its relations with frameworks used. If your knowledge of these frameworks is shaky, this will be time to improve it. Reasonable managers don't expect from you stellar performance from day one.

Wider experience allows you to see patterns and analogies and saves you some effort and time understanding another framework. So, knowing more frameworks not necessarily mean you learn proportionally shallower part of each.

Answer 2

It's great for your programming abilities, but can be murder on your career.

That the above is seemingly a contradiction belies the insidious nature of programming as a profession.

Why?

A lot of it depends on where you are in your career. If you're a JR level guy, then a few years of Language X and a few years of Language Y will make you well rounded... But once you're senior level (10+ years), then to 98%[1] of the companies out there, you are now a JR programmer demanding SR level pay.

I'm sure this will get down-voted, with people clambering on about hiring smart & get's things done, but the truth is for every fogcreek out there, there are 3k dysfunctional or borderline psychotic organizations, and we all have to work somewhere.

Answer 3

I switch stacks almost every day, when I go home from work and fire up one of my personal projects. I'll quite happily use beta frameworks for these, but professional projects need more stability.

Admittedly this happens less often now that mini-me has arrived, but still.

As for your second question, I prefer to work with folk who've both wide and deep experience. I also prefer to win every game of chess, but it's not always up to me.

Answer 4

There are a couple of idioms that I think of whenever I learn a new stack:

When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

and

Use the right tool for the right job.

I believe that learning new stacks only makes you better programmer and helps your career progress.

Answer 5

A good developer is going to make good of whatever tools are necessary to complete the job. A good dev knows when they need to ask something on a forum or gain a deeper understanding of abstractions and/or tools. On the other hand, bad devs don't know or simply don't care. Tools don't make the dev any more than shoes make the runner.

Answer 6

In summary, programming is a cross-stack skill. (I've switched at least 5 times across a number of jobs.)

Secondly, I think teams need a mix of long term 'single stack specialists' and cross-stackers. The mix allows fresh perspectives on problem solving combined with solid platform roots.

Answer 7

I've switched stacks two times, at the same employer.

I started out in Delphi, writing windows apps. I transitioned to PHP because the PHP guys needed the help. I worked my way up to being the lead web developer. Then the edict came down that we were going to become web-centric instead of windows-centric, so we needed to up-level the usability of our web apps. Based on that, I studied up on javascript rich app frameworks and switched to Ext JS + web services.

TLDR; I've switched stacks when the job required it.

Don't worry about your resume if you're in a job that you like doing. If your worry is that switching stacks will hurt your chances at getting a different job, maybe you just need to make finding a different job a priority.

Answer 8

I've switched stack's two times, because I changed company's.

I switched from PHP to C#.Net, and from C#.Net to PHP again.

Changing stack's didn't specially hurt my career progress, quite the opposite I think, at this point, I'm a developer that has knowledge on two key languages for Web Development. And from a career perspective that is helpful, because if my employer throws at me, a site in either technologies I can work with both of them..

In terms of technical knowledge, the switch made some big dent's, my core language is PHP, and with two years "lost" working on C# didn't help, I've missed a lot of things regarding PHP, simply because when I got home, I had to investigate some C# library, or class that I've never heard of.. and all the time was devoted to learning all I could about C#...

Continuing with the technical stuff, I don't believe that I can be good at two languages ( or anybody else, except a few rare exceptions ), and that was felt on my freelance work, because during the day I worked on C# and at night in PHP.. and since I didn't stay that much updated, there were somethings that I did, that weren't that quite right..

Regarding your other question, I like to work with every type of person, those who have an deep insight into a stack, and those who don't, because creatively speaking, their solutions are going to be completely different and that doesn't mean that one is better than the other.. and I also like to work with people from different areas from client management to web designer's, passing by the cleaning lady that always have life lessons, that I can use on my day to day work..