Ask HN: Best way to optimize career for money in IT?
I'm a 24 y.o. junior/medior "Cybersecurity Specialist" with around two years of experience, primarily focused on Kubernetes, container, Cloud security but I also really enjoy coding, application observability and systems design.
I would like to lay out a plan to optimize my career for money and time, more than anything else. I don't really care about working at a prestigious company or having a shiny role to my name. As long as I make money, enjoy work and have time outside of it, I'm happy.
I'm not looking for entrepreneurship advice. Instead, I am interested how to organize my skillset in a way that I can still stay in a tech role and make "serious" money while doing it. Do I have a better chance if I focus on one specific technology and become an expert in it? Or should I be proficient in many technologies? What do such roles even look like? Should I double down on coding? Is it even possible to have money, time and still have fun?
I've heard that switching jobs often will help me get a bigger salary. On the other hand I'm a bit scared of ending up corporate hopping between jobs with a lot of meetings but no responsibility/fun. My current job pays a smaller salary relative to other companies in the area due to the nature of what we do but on the other hand it's really fun and I get to learn and deploy industry standard technologies, which I think is very valuable experience. As far as I can tell I'm really good and learning things and enjoy doing so.
As mentioned, I see two possible ways: becoming an absolute expert in one high-demand technology or becoming proficient in many technologies.
What is your experience?