Let me give my thoughts on this, being a .Net developer and running a company in Croatia. A bit of background on me first, to understand my thougts better - as Croatian economy is structurally in a really bad condition for IT, I've been trying to join some company/project on a telecommuting basis.
Now, this is where I'm having a problem - as most companies that would consider remote workers are startups unable to find enough local talent, I've noticed that there really aren't any/much startups running on .Net stack.
Which I find a bit unfair, as .Net ecosystem has a lot to offer, if you just look out of the walls of Microsoft a little bit. And with the raise of cloud platforms, the license price difference will be a less of an issue than before. For development tools, there are programs within MS where a development company gets all the tools for a negligible amount of money. Still, it seems it's not enough for most of the startups to adopt that technology.
On the other hand, I've gotten into Rails lately and I find it really interesting platform to work on, so I'm expanding my skills in that space trying to reach companies willing to have remote workers on that stack. I haven't fixed any deals yet, but I've had several contacts compared to literally none in the .Net ecosystem.
You've said you're into Python, if you look this month's "who's hiring" theme, you'll notice a bit of a rise for Python. So, if you're targeting startups, Ruby and Python may seem better opportunities than .Net. If you're targetting getting a job in some (stable) company outside of the lights of the startup scene, that's where you've said .Net is in demand. After all, it's mostly what are your goals.
Now, this is where I'm having a problem - as most companies that would consider remote workers are startups unable to find enough local talent, I've noticed that there really aren't any/much startups running on .Net stack.
Which I find a bit unfair, as .Net ecosystem has a lot to offer, if you just look out of the walls of Microsoft a little bit. And with the raise of cloud platforms, the license price difference will be a less of an issue than before. For development tools, there are programs within MS where a development company gets all the tools for a negligible amount of money. Still, it seems it's not enough for most of the startups to adopt that technology.
On the other hand, I've gotten into Rails lately and I find it really interesting platform to work on, so I'm expanding my skills in that space trying to reach companies willing to have remote workers on that stack. I haven't fixed any deals yet, but I've had several contacts compared to literally none in the .Net ecosystem.
You've said you're into Python, if you look this month's "who's hiring" theme, you'll notice a bit of a rise for Python. So, if you're targeting startups, Ruby and Python may seem better opportunities than .Net. If you're targetting getting a job in some (stable) company outside of the lights of the startup scene, that's where you've said .Net is in demand. After all, it's mostly what are your goals.
Hope it helps...