I'm a similar pickle, though my primary experience has been with Borland tools. This puts me into a slightly worse situation that you're in, especially given the depth of MS deployment/presence in my neck of the woods.

You're right; many job openings are for MS tools/technologies. However, I'd probably take that position because I think it will make you far more valuable than you are now. You'd be exposed to other ways to solve problems, be able to add more tools/skills to your kit, and gain practical experience with Perl/Unix.

In a short time, you should be able to combine both points of view into far superior solutions than those solely trained in a single methodology/tool set. In turn, this should let you compete for different types of positions, those requiring answers using the best of all worlds.

I would strive to keep your MS skills as sharp as possible, possibly by participating in relevant newsgroups or online communities in your spare time. To my mind, understanding multiple tools and philosophies makes you a better problem solver in the long run. This also gives you a backup plan. It's easier to take risks if you've got one in place.

Also, there's the happiness factor. To my mind, it's better to be happy than rich. Security can lead to complacency...and that can lead to obsolescence. Should the organization you're working for choose to make a paradigm shift, obsolescence leads to a pink slip.

I'm sure we all know people who hate their high paying jobs. In my book, if the job makes you happier, take it. I think you'll find yourself far more energized than limited. At the very least, you'll have enjoyed yourself, regardless of what the future brings.

As far as the future goes, MS will continue to look for ways to "innovate" and grow their business, as will other vendors. We will continue to see new ways of solving problems. I believe, though, that you can adapt to whatever tools are available if you have mastered the basic skills required for related tools.

My two cents; as always, your mileage may vary.

--f

If you know how to administer an NT box, you know how to administer an NT box. If you know system administration, you can learn to adminster an NT box or an HP-UX box or a BSD or a Linux box.

If you're single, or financially secure, or have very little debt and a simple lifestyle, you can afford to go with what you really want to do.

If you have a family to support, or a $3000-a-day Faberge egg habit, or lots of other bills, you may have to do something you don't enjoy as much.

But the thing is, money's not worth misery. If you're skilled, know how to learn, and aren't afraid of hard work, you'll do fine.

Something to ask yourself is whether you want to compete in the market based on your tool skills or based on your problem-solving skills. Problem-solving skills have a longer half-life than tools skills, and tend to get you placed higher in projects. When tapping architects for a project, I look to thinking ability and exposure before looking at narrow technical skills.

If you do decide to market yourself based on tool skills, there's some benefit to having a rare skill, as long as there's at least some market for it. Plenty of people know C, fewer know Perl. Fewer still know how to speak Perl, SQL, and HTML. That's a skill set that I'd bet on, were I going strictly technical. Databases are hardly going away, and HTML will be with us for a while. Perl is a great way to tie the two together.

Now you may not plan on being at your current company forever. But ask yourself some questions. Would your new job pay the bills to satisfaction? Would you learn new stuff? Will you be able to stay in it for more than a couple of years? Will the job be able to grow and change over time?

If you are answering yes to those, then I wouldn't be concerned. First of all your immediate future would be taken care of. Secondly it is important to keep learning. Even if what you are learning turns out not to be useful, the habit is important to keep up. Thirdly this industry changes fast. In a few years the identities of the cool technologies will change, and change again. If Britain follows what is going on in many other countries, Unix derivatives (eg Linux) will be in rapidly growing demand. And finally if the job has room to grow, then you have a good chance at being able to tailor what you are doing to what seems to be growing in popularity then.

You don't say what part of the UK you're in. My experience is based in London, but I do have contacts in other parts of the country.

I do Perl, Unix and SQL. I used to write C, but no-one's asked me for that in over five years. There are huge numbers of companies using these technologies in London - from small internet startups to huge corporations. Most of the large banks in the City use Perl and Unix for their back-end processing.

It's probably true that there are more MS-based jobs out there, but there are more than enough Perl/Unix jobs to go round the people that want them.

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

I'm based in Bristol.

I recently search a job site for vacancies in the South West and found 39 for Perl but 204 for Visual Basic.

CH

39 sounds plenty - how many jobs do you want :)

Part of the problem may be that Perl is far more community-based than other languages. Many of the best Perl jobs never make it to job sites. Get in touch with your local Perl Monger group. They'll probably know where the jobs are. There was a bristol.pm, but I don't know how active it is. There's certainly a bath.pm - they might be able to help.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

I recently was forced to change jobs (company relocated). I took about the same $$$ as a salary as I was making before (actually less) if you count the >40 hours I got billed. I took the position because I knew a lot of people that worked there and they really liked the work place environment and they were using unix which I really wanted to play with in a production environment. In the short time(< 6 months) I have been there I have received one raise, and have a salary review this summer. MORAL = do what you want to, try to have fun at what you are doing, let the $$$ work itself out. :-)

I find myself in a similar position, but looking the other way - maybe taking on board more MS skills when (up until now) I've been strictly Linux, Perl, HTML, MySQL, etc. However, I'm thinking of moving to another part of the UK and my initial reconaissance shows me that VB and NT skills are in demand in some areas, so I'd take that sort of job in preference to none at all.

But if you can afford it, take the Perl job - I've never, ever regretted that I can market my Unix skills, and despite the MS marketing there's massive demand for C/Perl/Unix. When you've seen a warehouse full of Sun boxen, with just one rack of NT boxes, you'll understand ;-)

I too have a family to support. Sometimes that means ignoring the safe bet and taking a long-term risk. When I committed heavily to Linux in '95, I did that and it was worth it. Nowadays, that's less of a risk and more of a smart move ;-)

Now, if you often want to do things that are really, really stupid, then this strategy may not work for you :)

But seriously, if you're doing what you love, you'll do your best. If you're doing your best, there'll be someone who wants to take advantage of that, and will pay for the priviledge.

When it comes right down to it, none of us know what the future of the programming industry (or anything else) will be. And there is no such thing as a "secure future." As a wise, green little muppet once said, "always in motion is the future." Everything you do, including (sometimes especially!) nothing, is a risk to your security. Some of these risks are bigger (and more nerve wracking) than others, and some of them have bigger rewards than others. So the question is not whether or not you should take risks, but which risks you should take. And that question is simply a matter of temperment, and your analysis of the risk-reward ratio of the choices before you.

No one here can tell you which decision to make. The best advice I can give you is that everything involves risk, so take the risk you can live with. Five years from now, do you think you'll be more likely to look back and say, "Boy, I'm glad I went for it," or, "Boy, I'm glad I didn't give this up"?

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

My day job pays me to write the applications that automate the criminal justice system (I work in Canada, for the Provincial DoJ). The tool of (not my) choice is Powerbuilder, which to me is the station wagon of programming languages. It's so boring.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I never like to blame the tool, since most tools can be learned to work and be productive with. But anyway you look at it, Powerbuilder a.) bores me, b.) is dying a slow and painful death c.) does many things to hinder the developer (the scope of which is beyond this post and off-topic). It's not a skill that will be valuable (either financially, or in terms of what really interests me).

Everyday I'm at work, I often really feel like I'm working. As in, the fact that I'm being paid to be there always looms over me like a dark cloud. I've seriously considered taking my credentials (okay, I've only got 7 months experience since finishing a 1.5 year programming course, but...) elsewhere.

Where is "elsewhere"? Well, I have two major interests, that I've basically stopped pursuing for the most part since finishing school:

1. Network security/Sysadmin'ing - I dream of being able to play with Linux and/or the BSD's at work, constantly following the latest and greatest minds as they figure out new ways to compromise the security of mission critical networks. It's never ceased to amaze me that it often times takes little more than the intelligence of a twelve-year old to compromise some of the most important networks in the world. Also, I've found that by learning how to break things, you also learn a lot about how they work.
   
   
2. Being a Perl/C/maaaybe Python Programmer - Which of course is a pretty broad statement, since I haven't specified (and quite frankly don't know) what specific type of programming I would do, I just know that in many situations given any kind of programming task, I would love to have the community support and extremely helpful environment that Perl runs in, and the generally high level of intelligence that the "average programmer" in each of said languages tends to display.

So what's holding me back? Why haven't I moved into one of these disciplines yet? Well, honestly, I worry about two other things:

• What if I look like I'm job-hopping on my resume? After finishing school in July '00, I got my first job within a couple weeks. Nine weeks after working there, the gov't came along and offered me $10,000 more, three weeks holidays, and every benefit in the book. Not to mention that I work 1 less hour per day now too. But if I quit here, I (quite possibly) lose all of that, with the possibility of gaining much more intellectual satisfaction. Which to me is a worth tradeoff but...
  
  
• What if the next job is just as boring? What if I take a position as a Perl programmer and it turns out I spend all my time writing simple (aka, boring) CGI scripts that read in data from a database and spit it out to a web page, lather, rinse, repeat? That's not my idea of exciting either. :)

So that definitely scares me. If I'm going to take the risk of getting into an area that really fascinates me, I better not end up with the same feeling of drudgery and boredom I do now. :)

What it comes down to though, is that if you know that this position will improve your happiness, from my perspective I would definitely take it. But then again, I'm young (22) and not married (but happily playing the field :), so maybe I'm just ambitious. =]

*ahem*

<advice type="my mother">
If it were fun, we'd call it fun, but it's work, so we call it work.
</advice>
[download]

So there you go :-) Sometimes work is a cruddy mess of drudgery.
that being said, start playing the field. Be honest if they mention the job hopping, but don't phrase it like "Work bores me." or you'll find little response.
That Being Said, if you wanna move to Colorado, I know of some places that need P*w*rB**ld*r people in the worst way.

How dare you offer me a Powerbuilder job.

*cough*So how much does it pay?*cough* =]