Mission Impossible: IT Career Switch
As someone trying to switch back into full time development after pivoting from it some years ago, I have to say I&#x27;m depressed at the landscape. 90% of jobs are some form web development in JS or Python which require experience with the framework <i>du jour</i>. It&#x27;s not clear to me if by the time I&#x27;ll learn them they won&#x27;t be already obsolete. They seem very poor targets to specialize yourself in and unlikely to be recognized as senior level positions. The remaining jobs usually demand highly specialized experience with a very tiny subset of what I consider IT technical skills, but at a senior level, for example: Linux kernel module developer - a job I could certainly do but only after 3-6 largely unproductive months.<p>Companies don&#x27;t seem to hire &quot;computer programmers&quot; anymore: people with a broad horizontal skill set that can write code and quickly learn a new imperative language or framework as required by the current project, that can understand the principles of the underlying hardware, of the entire network stack, of the OS that ties everything together and delivers some high level abstraction like a web service etc. It&#x27;s all a fragmented mess of very specialized islands.<p>Perhaps companies are no longer willing to invest in specialization of external talent or internally fulfill all needs for a broad skill set, because such jobs are the most fun and desirable. What&#x27;s left over for outsiders are just the script monkeying and deep niches.