My goal is simple — to get or be in a position where I am employable. But to make myself employable, I don't have clear path which to take to leverage what I already know. I feel I can either start from scratch - say dive in Machine Learning path or say pick up React and begin to prototype React full stack app. But for both, I will have zero use in my day job since there isn't any 'real' growth happening in my company. Its mostly minor fixes and perhaps writing powershell script here and there.
A bit into my background, I started my career late - I got true programming job at 28. Since then, I’ve been with my current employer doing Java and legacy C# development for six years. Sure, first four years or so, I learned a lot. But now, I feel I'm not learning that much at all. I started to casually apply for job last year or so which, now looking back has been a wake up call to really be proactive and figure out where to go from here. I don't make that much which is a major motivation to get myself on the right track.
I refuse to believe, 'do a start-up' is the way to get myself out of my situation. There has to be something better I can do to leverage what I have done. I have done my best to upskill, e.g. got AWS practitioner certificate. Again, no real use in my day job. Also, I have done leetcode ~150 problems but I am not that gifted to crack FAANG interview. I'm okay with system design.
For more experience professional here who have navigated out of this situation, what can I realistically do right now? What should I prioritize as short-term and long-term goals? What kind of goals should I have for next month, second, month, third month, etc? Are my options the following?
1) go machine learning path or ML-OPS path? If so, how do I show potential employer, "hi, i know this but my day job has no use for this"
2) get comfortable with react - my gut feeling tells me perhaps I can use this to build full stack application to show employers of 'builder' personality?
3) pursue advance cloud certification? say AWS intermediate certificate?
Transferring within org is not an option right now since promo cycle starts in April.
Functional Reactive Programming (2016) uses examples in Java 8. Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) recently announced Fabulous Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms, which uses C#.
That is to say, within languages there is still plenty to learn.
There's the operating systems and hardware route, systems programming, low-level stuff. Maybe not immediately applicable to present work.
There's cloud and DevOps, observability and monitoring. Hard to start that unless there's already a "digital transformation" initiative.
But you could segue to an ML platform while working out a data-driven ML thing.
React (frontend) is fine, but how's the backend knowledge? Would you use Spring and Hibernate, .NET Core, or Node.js?
Maybe work on some side projects and develop a portfolio? Blog about issues you've solved, handy shortcuts, migration tips, or discuss YAML pipelines?
Don't know about certs. Spinning up from Terraform (Gitops) seems eminently more hands-on.
There's also formal reasoning and software validation. Provers, constraint solvers, and dynamic programming. Operations algorithms and management science, optimization and the like.
You can write old-styled software for those who have nostalgic feelings about good old times, or support solutions written for old platforms. Instead of been thinking about it as of trash, think about it as it is retro
First you learn the technology stack you want to go into really well on the side. Get to the point where you can explain the intricacies of how you “used the tech” (even though you didn’t) to the point where when someone ask you deep details of what you did on your job, what tradeoffs you made and what you like don’t like about the technology you can explain it.
I would have no ethical qualms about doing whatever is necessary to get a job in today’s environment.
Now is far certifications? They are meaningless and no one takes them seriously. They are multiple choice tests that any idiot can pass by memorizing a few concepts from ACloudGuru. Interviewers don’t take them seriously at all as far as having competence.
I have 7 active AWS Certs and at one point had 9 out of the then 11. I got my first one without ever logging into the AWS console and my next 4 within the first 6 months. They were never about getting a job. They served as a guided learning path to help me know what I didn’t know as I became the defacto cloud architect at a startup.
Not even AWS Professional Services (former employee) the internal cloud consulting arm at AWS cares about certification as a hiring criteria.
I now work as a staff cloud consultant specializing in app dev + cloud working full time at a 3rd party cloud consulting company. I got my start on AWS dealing with migrating from .Net Framework to .net Core on AWS at the startup.
No one is going to hire you because you studied MLOps on the side doing toy projects when there are plenty of people with real world experience looking for jobs.
Your other bet is working for a company that has a mixture of .Net framework and they are moving to .NET Core and other modern tech and then volunteer to work on more modern tech at your new job.
Since you have work experience in backend (doesn't matter java / c#), and AWS certifications, leverage them. I would advice against going to front-end at this moment. FE is comparatively a different beast.
Without knowing lot of your details (your domain, residence etc), here are some options that I could think of (some of which I have done in 30 years of experience).
- move to a company that uses the same tech but in a different domain (say logistics to finance) and then jump from there to a company that uses a modern tech (finance legacy tech to fintech company using rust or go) - within the same domain can you create a portfolio of side projects which are all aligned in some way - say if you are in retail, can you create projects on teraform scripts to deploy .net projects to multi-cloud (gcp, aws, azure); or for supporting blue-green deployment; idea is to use your "modern" knowledge within legacy but creating public portfolio to showcase your "modern" knowledge. - find a local leader that you admire (if you go to city-wide tech conferences or something like that you can find some like this), and ask them if you can help them with something as a side-hustle. They don't have to pay but they have to write a recommendation on LinkedIn for your work. Most tech leaders who talk have some projects going on and they struggle with their time. You can help while building a good portfolio - combination of some of the above
Do a combination of content creation (git projects, video streaming of coding, writing on LinkedIn ...), building a network, and obtaining social proof (recommendations). This will help you get good jobs.
For long term, this is the roadmap I would encourage: https://www.jjude.com/learn-next/
I also wrote about how the jobs are evolving: https://www.jjude.com/future-of-jobs/