from Hacker News

So COVID-19 struck and I am on unpaid vacation from my job for 1 month. Apparently Data Scientists are too costly to maintain in crunch periods. Anyways, I come from SWE background and been thinking to slowly getting back towards more engineer-y roles for some time now. I think this forced vacation might be good for me to learn some new skills in programming realm.

Two options I came up with:

1. Functional Programming and Scala

2. Distributed computing and Go

What do you guys think would make me more valuable in medium term if I want to optimize for hirability and money. These two are important for me because I currently live in Germany and my work visa (non-eu) is tied to my employment. If I get laid off, not only would I have no government support but also will get kicked out of the country if couldn't find a job in three months.

However these worst case scenario might not come to pass so what would you guys think will still be better to learn if I manage to keep my job after the dust settles?

PS: If you have more ideas reg other things I should focus on, I am happy to hear them too