Item — HN Reader

You got to find an unpopular language or platform and support that so you don't have much competition. Like COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, Ada, ARM assembly, X86 assembly, etc.

Learn how to make drivers and you can write drivers for a company with a new product.

1 comments

This, to me, is terrible advice. Being a successful contractor isn't about "having no competition", that's good for news headlines about old guys earning top dollar for maintaining cobol mainframes but not much else.

Pick tools that are used a million times per day (java, sql, whatever) by a million companies who will always need extra professionals that can add value quickly when onboarded to a new team.

More to the point, start researching the job markets wherever you plan to work. Stop guessing, do research. Good luck.

> Being a successful contractor isn't about "having no competition"

Yes it is, but to have no competition based on old technology isn't very smart. You can easily out-compete most software contractors by delivering fast & reliable software and having great communication and business skills.