<<I don't use software X because I can't run the same analyses I do with software Y>>
I often hear this statement in the GIS field regardless of who X and Y are. Of course, the most used GIS software are QGIS and ArcGIS but, for direct experience, I have heard these statements from users of one or the other.
In recent days, due to work needs, I have found myself using ArcGIS because it is the software used by the company I am working with. I hadn't used it for almost a decade, since version 9.
The world of work requires you to be flexible in the use of tools. If you are a carpenter you must be able to screw a bolt whether you use the wrench or the Bosch screwdriver.
You might be thinking: <<What does this have to do with the GIS world?>>.
It has everything to do with it. We must stop thinking of GIS as that software that "makes you do things" and go back to thinking that GIS is that methodological process that "makes you do things".
In the videos of my channel for a while you have found the animation that is there above; I call it the GIS Universe.
If you learn data-management and analysis methodologies, you will have no difficulty switching from software X to software Y and back again. It will change the graphics of the software tool, but if you really master what GIS means then you will have no difficulty. Personally, I spent a day reproducing 80% of the things I do with QGIS in an ESRI environment, entirely on my own.
A few years ago a fairly well-known company in the IT and consulting sector contacted me because it was looking for someone who knew how to use ESRI technology. Not a person who knew about GIS, but one who knew about ESRI technology. That collaboration did not start because I used, and still use, open-source tools, and they did not understand how I could help them without already working inside the ESRI ecosystem. It was no use trying to explain that only the interface was changing and that it would take me very little time to get used to the new graphical interface.
When I used the word must I was not just referring to us "geeks" of the GIS or gissari as they sometimes call us, but to the entire sector and therefore also to companies and recruiters. True competence lies not in knowing how to use software X or software Y but in understanding how to manage the workflow and also knowing how to manage it.
In my courses I have always made a preamble: <<I'm interested in you learning a methodology, not how to press a button in a graphical interface!>>