Csdrhrt

From one of your comments:

i want to work what i like to work and not what they want me to work

You need to go and start your own company then. If you're working for somebody else, you're at work to do what your employer wants you to do, not to do what you want to do.

In addition to the other good answers already here, I also think it may be useful to note that your attitude toward languages shows inexperience as a programmer.

The core tools and structures of programming (and, more generally, software engineering) are largely language-independent, and most of the people that I know who are strong programmers are not deeply concerned with choice of language. They often have languages they know better and prefer and languages they dislike, but their attitude toward being asked to work with a new language is typically not "No, I don't know it." but "I'll be a little slower on this project because I haven't used this language before."

As such, I would definitely advise embracing this opportunity to learn and to approach it as a chance to improve your skills as a software engineer overall.

In short: not as "now I need to learn language X" but "now I get to become better at programming in general but learning how language X is different than the languages I've used before."

Unless you work for a company that only makes its own proprietary software, and therefore has complete control over their languages and tools (and has no wish to move on), learning unfamiliar technologies is part of the job. Saying no to it is not only impractical at your level of experience, it is also a significantly career limiting move, as when the market moves on from what you know you'll find the range of jobs available to you dries up.

In any case, having a broad range of languages under your belt is technically beneficial:

• you're able to work on a wider variety of projects,


• you'll learn all the advantages of each and the tradeoffs they make; being able to select the right tool for the job is a highly important skill if you wish to become a senior


• the more you learn, the easier each new one becomes.

As noted in the comments, you should be pleased that they want you to break out of your silo, it's a sign that they respect your ability to learn quickly.

You should take it as a blessing in disguise. You are learning other technologies and tools that you wouldn't otherwise learn if you were "pigeoned holed" into one language or platform. It gets easier to learn new technologies the more you do it - they are more alike than you think and there are frameworks or methodologies that span across platforms and tools.

I begun as an Android developer 6 years ago and a couple of years ago there was a time where there were too many Android developers at my company to have work and be productive. I was forced to learn React or be twiddling my thumbs for a few months. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since then I have dabbled in many different tools like Flutter, React Native, Ionic, Angular, React, Native iOS, and Backend Web (AWS). Since I have experience with all of these tools I have more options to choose from of what I want to work on and thus have the ability to choose a project that is very interesting to me based on that flexibility.

I am not against learning new things which are beneficial to them, the point is I am trading off my time for developing skills beneficial for them and not for my career ..I think if I will spend more time in the languages I know which are right now in good demand in this industry I can get better opportunity and pay.

Actually them exposing you to the different tools might actually make you discover a hidden talent or understand how other platforms work - giving you a huge advantage over your competition and peers. "I think if I will spend more time in the languages I know which are right now in good demand in this industry I can get better opportunity and pay." - anyone in the industry would take a flexible developer who was good at coding rather than someone who can only do one platform or tool well. A great developer is not only purely measured by the knowledge of the framework or tooling they're on, but also how well they interact with their team, what methodologies they know, and how they write code.

Languages, frameworks, and tools change so often that you should focus on the goal you are achieving in the work they're giving you, rather than the chosen tooling or language.

So I wanted to point out that a lot of people saying you should be honored and that what is happening is good are only speaking bs. Realistically, you should want your job to be stuff you like, otherwise you have to deal with that daily and it makes your life worse. I would recommend asking if you could just focus on your current languages, and state that that would be a much greater asset to the company, as you can be great at those languages, and you won't screw up. Say this kindly though, and if they refuse, you can always start looking for another job. Companies shouldn't hire you for one thing and expect you to do something else. That's complete bs. If it isn't specifically listed as something you had to do when you got your current role, then you don't have to do it.

Edit: This is looking at the situation in a corporate manner, but from a programming perspective, you still might wanna know more languages if they are super close bound to what you know or are always required for what you do. That being said, they might have teams for other languages, but for example, if you know HTML and JavaScript, it would be best you know CSS (this is just an example).

I want to concur with the other people who have pointed out the technical aspects of your problem: learning new languages quickly is one of the most important skills you will ever develop as a modern software engineer. From my perspective, every language is just a different library of syntactic sugar. They invariably make some tasks simpler at the cost of making other tasks more involved. Therefore, learning new languages is no different from learning new APIs and libraries. And the better someone like you or me is at leveraging existing tools, the more productive we become. If we consider the fact that these days new, powerful tools are being created and shared everyday, the dramatic advantage of a developer who can identify the right tools and leverage them for faster development becomes (to me) the single most important trait for being a good peogrammer.

Although there are "C wizards" and other incredibly specialized individuals in this industry, the most productive software engineer will, in my mind, be the one that writes the least code, and lets the right language and library do the rest.

After doing this rodeo for 20+ years I've gone through some of this.

You have a career choice. From what you stated, you want to be a specialist in your area of choice. That's great, we need folks of all backgrounds and focus.

What your company wants of you isn't a joke. You're not a joke because of it either. You're the programmer! They don't care or maybe even know what their options might be. They've hired you to bring solutions.

The scale of this changes depending on if you're working at a company where their software is their business vs where software is a necessary evil to conducting their business.

I will tell you that being a hyper focused specialist is fine and good, but your options will be very narrow.

I've never heard anyone say being a Polyglot was a bad thing though. Learning various languages will expose you to novel algorithm approaches and different ways of solving the same problems. All knowledge is good.

Be thirsty my friend and drink from the fire hose of knowledge!

This situation sounds distinctly familiar to me.

I've been in the enviable position for a large part of last year of being on the team's backburner, my particular speciality as an App-Developer being known to be needed, but not for a while.
So they tasked me to upskill in Web-Development technologies and work on the company website.

This looks great on my CV, it's a whole skillset I didn't have before and I'm glad to have it.

As others have said, it's normal to be required to learn new skills and languages as a software developer.

Take it as a good thing, some studios simply won't give you the opportunity.

However, the big caveat is that they also gave me an attendant payrise to recognise my new capabilities.

If you're learning new skills or knowledge that affect your future employment, you have leverage to ask for a payrise.

Remember though, with rare exception, your employer will not tell you this, nor will they do it automatically.

You need to be the one to make a case for it.