Ask HN: Switching Skillset as a Developer
I have 2 years of experience developing custom apps on PaaS (e.g. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Appian, Pega, Okta) on federal projects, but it's not fulfilling to me. I have a 4 year degree in comp sci, but I'm not sure if I should consider myself a mid-tier or entry level developer when applying to jobs outside this technology stack.
Have you ever made a big switch in your career in terms of the technology you're using? Did you have to learn on the go, or build up personal projects which landed you a job? It's frustrating to feel burnt out at the end of the day/week with seemingly no room to work and learn new things. My career has progressed over the years as I learned about opportunities in the tech world. I first started out in HTML web and email design, but I found it to be too difficult to make it into anything more than beer money. After talking to other people in the industry, I started making websites in simple PHP. Eventually I migrated to WordPress and spent a few years building my LAMP stack skills. WP and PHP becomes a nightmare for any large project, and I found myself getting burned and burnt out by clients and PHP issues. Along the way, I picked up JS and got good enough to pass interviews. This led to a one year gig as part of a marketing team, cranking out code and dealing with non-technicals ruining projects. The JS frameworks started exploding, and I found work as an AngularJS (1.x) dev. This got me into corporate work. I got exposed to more tech and my resume blew up. Nowadays, I work in React and NodeJS but my experience gets me jobs across all of the stacks I dabbled in. My recommendation is to get a job, learn all you can, coast. Then use some of your free time to educate yourself for your next job. Get more skills, rinse, repeat. Im working on leaving too. If Im a developer by the end of 2020 I'll consider myself to have failed. The thing is I, along with every other person on Earth, am a good software developer. I just can't get anything other than these stupid bug fixing / feature adding roles. As I get older it'll continue to get more out of balance. I've decided to learn how to build products. That means PCB design, case design, coding (already got that one), the patent process, etc. I'm done building things to impress employers who dont respect me at all other than my ability to write code. I'm making a run for it. You should too. > I just can't get anything other than these stupid bug fixing / feature adding roles. As I get older it'll continue to get more out of balance. It sounds like you've made your mind up about exiting but for others, working at smaller startups usually gives you far more exposure to new areas of the stack/problems that you may not have come across. In the last year I've picked up a ton of devops knowledge, learnt UX best practises so can design far better interfaces, and I've learnt a new frontend framework. I just wouldn't have got if I'd stayed in my 'steady' role.