What emerging skills should we be learning now to be ready when things pick up?

[edison]

If/when the economy and market pick up longer term, what newer technical skills do you think we should be learning/improving in the next couple of years to be prepared?

I was interested to see a couple of different reports and surveys including this report on '2020 State of Software Engineering' highlight the long term growth potential of 3D coding skills like Unreal Engine and the associated high salaries that can go with it.

2020 State of Software Engineers - Hired

3D and AR/VR is not just in gaming but increasingly used in industrial and commercial applications.

I guess the report was compiled before Covid but there's some interesting stats in here on growth areas in software engineering roles and languages.

What else is there?

[jayn200]

I don't know. I am not personally one to learn emerging technologies for the fun of it. Would only learn these as required on the job.

You need a strong market if you are going invest your own time and money out of contract to train and need some staying power.

This report also seems heavily geared towards usa and specifically san Francisco bay area. Which is very heavily into developing with the newest technologies and likes to ride the fads. I don't think this happens as much in London. Seems to be older more stable technologies being used here.

C# wasn't even included in the list of most used programming languages for example and it's a top 3 most used programming language in London market. The nerds in bay area won't touch it though so it makes sense why it says that in this report.

AR and VR are only growing significantly in % not in absolute figures so I wouldn't reskill into this area unless you just really enjoy it. Do a search for VR on any job board and you'll see it's not in demand in London and the pay is tulip, very few contract opportunities.

In times of crisis do you really want to be learning an emerging technology or would you rather strengthen in demand fundamentals and widely used technologies. I think companies will be cutting these bleeding edge projects before they cut their projects implementing/upgrading their core finance, crm, operational systems.