Choosing a skill in tech can be compared to choosing a flavor of Jam out of 30 options at a store. You'll stare at your options, confused on which one choice to pick that would make all the difference.

Then you pick one.

You think you've made the right decision.

Then the feeling hits you.

You look back at the other options you said no to, and wonder if you made the wrong decision.

We've all been there.

Scientists call this the "Paradox of choice", basically given a ton of choices it's harder to make a firm decision and stick to it.

This plays out in tech more than usual, a newbie gets hyped up about 6-figure salaries and a work culture that is as rewarding as it is unstable.

But choosing a skill seems like a lost cause on them.

And that's because they don't know where their choice of skills lie in the tech job creation spectrum.

So i'll illustrate with a story.

One about an entrepreneur named Alfred who has a great idea for a digital SaaS product.

Building an MVP

Everything starts with people like Alfred, who take up agency and risk to create a new business venture and, in the process create jobs for others.

Alfred wanted to build a SaaS product that helped solve the problems small businesses face when doing book-keeping and accounting.

He had 2 choices; Figure out how to build the product himself (Curious or broke) or outsource it by hiring diverse skillsets (Has enough money to invest in labor).

He chose to hire people, but rather than get plenty developers, designers, PMs and what-not for a new product (which would have been too much over head), he opted to hiring a skillset when the product needed it.

Again, when the product needed it.

So he got started by looking for a developer to build the initial version of the product, since it's core functionality first for the MVP, he hired a backend developer who built the initial (but buggy and ugly) version and promoted the MVP to his potential users hoping they'd bite. (💲0 MRR)

Once the product started taking off, users requested for new features which the backend developer delivered on, the dev also built the UI using Bootstrap and a theme he copped from Theme Forest.

No stress. (💲10K MRR)

But with more features comes more risk of having a bad user experience, the UI lagged in performance and was clunky, which was what the latest reviews on Trustpilot was saying.

Optimizing the user interface.

So Alfred, hired a Front-end developer to optimize the UI. Since this was a growth-phase of the company, he wanted someone who had experience optimizing interfaces for the web, not a junior or an intern.

He finally found someone who had the needed experience and they revamped the UI by having the front-end dev customize Bootstrap (Even the devil wouldn't take this torture).

Things got better, usage increased as the app became faster to use. (💲25K MRR)

But other entrepreneurs started noticing the buzz this boring company was creating and wanted a piece of the startup pie. They opted to copy Alfred's product which left his market saturated with look-alikes of his product.

He knew he needed to differentiate his product somehow. The technology was pretty basic so there was no point in trying to add more features to it, so he hired a UI/UX designer to optimize the experience instead.

That seemed to work, as their product got a facelift and exceptional experience which made it stand out from the market. Which wouldn't have been possible if the designer wasn't the mentee of Jonathan Ive, famous product designer from Apple.

Usage went up. (💲40k MRR).

Streamlining communication between workers

With this team of 3, handling them personally was taking a toll on Alfred, who didn't want to manage people, so he hired a project manager to streamline teamwork. The project manager in question had worked at Netflix for 2 years, so they knew a bunch about handling adamant designers and annoying developers to drive projects forward.

The product kept growing steadily with Alfred managing marketing.

Documenting the technology

At a point the backend developer had to leave the company as their 2-year contract had come to a close, so Alfred needed to hire 2 new developers to handle the system much better.

And while they were on it, they decided to document the entire system so that it would be easier for other developers to use it, so they urged Alfred to hire a technical writer, which he did.

Maintenance was going smoothly, but during this period their user experience was being copied by their competitors which reduced their market share like an Olympic runner draining a keg of water after a wicked sprint.

Creating a unique identity

They needed to differentiate further and Alfred knew just the right skillset for the job, so they hired a Brand Designer to revamp the product's identity. They were about to become world-class.

But branding is an expensive skillset, mostly because companies need them at a high growth point and designers are more than happy to charge 6-figures for their expertise. Since this was the brand Alfred was going to helm in the future, he paid a lot for a brand designer to create a memorable identity for his product, one that would stick like glue in the minds of his users.

Now the team was bigger, their product was different from the rest of the market (From a branding POV), and revenue shot up. (💲90k MRR).

Improving the product's quality, durability and security

Alfred then hired a QA engineer to ensure product quality. (💲110k MRR)

As the product gained more market share, the team needed to optimize their hosting costs and service uptime, so Alfred hired a DevOps engineer to strengthen their network.

The product reached its 3rd year and investors started kissing up to Alfred for a stake of the company, the generated press drove traffic to their app and more people wanted to use the application which raised questions from regulatory bodies about how they were protecting user's data.

To comply, Alfred hired a security expert to protect their data and an Ethical hacker to test their beefed-up security policies for leaks. (💲150k MRR)

Conclusion

From the story above, you can see how Alfred's company grew from a lone backend developer to a large enterprise team protecting their users data.

Those jobs were created because the business had needs that could only be addressed by specialist professionals. Because if I had to make a critical decision for a business, why would I hire an intern?

20 years ago, most of these roles didn't exist, now we can't imagine functioning without them.

And most of them don't come easy, not necessarily because of lack of work, but because of lack of talent with work experience.

From this story, the easiest jobs to get in tech are the ones most needed during the initial startup phase.

Skills like software development, no-code and lead generation.

For these skills, you'd get hired faster than other skills like UI/UX design, QA and Cyber Security.

This doesn't mean you should throw your current skillset for something else though, instead pair it up with something early-stage founders need.

That way you'd have a startup skill and an enterprise skill.

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