What can I legitimately do when my day job operates within legacy technologies and I have no interest getting another job within this space - think legacy .Net framework desktop application and monolithic Java application.
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.