Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

110 pointsRefactorCareer82 comments

I've been programming for 20 years, the last 12 in ASP.net webforms (I know, I know). In every job, I've been told I was the top dev at the company. I kept my current job because of the money and flexibility they gave me to stay, but now that working here isn't worth it anymore, I'm feeling that remaining in this job has soured my career. I'm not sure where to go from here.

I've held management positions, and while my projects were successful, I'm not interested there. The monotonous consulting-services work I've been doing for the last 5+ years hasn't lent itself to exploring new technologies, so I don't have the breadth for an architect job. I've tried the solo-business route, and while my app is loved and has sold copies, it's only breaking even and won't sustain me now.

Almost all of the jobs I am interested in (remote or product-based) want newer technology. SQL Server's been a big part of my entire career, but it feels like that is losing relevance with the ORMs/EFs of the world. I've only worked with MVC on personal projects, but even if I brushed up on it, I'm guessing managers would feel I am an expensive hire without any advantage a junior dev who worked with MVC their whole career.

Do I try to build a MVC portfolio, since that seems to be the popular MS technology? Or work on a JS portfolio (my web style today is already JS calling JSON services) and try to rebuild myself on the front end?

Do I take a big pay cut and try to rebuild my skills with a company open to a senior dev without the exact experience?

Do I try to gamble and find myself a newer technology to reinvent myself into, hoping it sticks around?

Or am I just at the natural point in my career where I'm supposed to be working for another services company?

Anyone refactor themselves into something new at a similar point in their career? I'd love to hear your advice. RefactorCareer@gmail.com in case you have any private advice.

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I was also in a similar position as you as a valued lead dev with 15 years of experience working in a company that didn’t want to embrace newer technologies (stuck on WebForms, not moving to MVC, etc). I was not interested in progressing into middle management and had hit the ceiling with regards pay so I became a contractor. I taught myself MVC got an initial bum-on-a-seat noddy contract which was doing MVC CRUD screens for 3 months. Then for the next contract I combined my wealth of experience with my new found proven MVC credentials and got a lovely MVC contract at a senior level earning much more than I have ever earned before. Contracting is not for everyone but I’ve been doing it for 5 years now and still consider it one of my better career moves.

That sounds like a good path as well. Thanks for sharing your personal story; sounds like it would be worth it to take a temporary paycut to gain some experience.

I don't think you need to consider a pay cut. It's easy to look at HN and think that all of the good jobs are in new technologies and your experience is worthless. That's not the case.

Take a week or two to build a handful of sites in ASP.Net MVC with Entity Framework, so you're familiar with the basics. At that point you'd be marketable for a lot of current senior .Net positions. Experience with .Net is more relevant to most companies than MVC-specific experience. Add in your SQL Server skills for when Entity Framework doesn't cover exactly what you need and you can almost write your own ticket.

How are you finding your contracts?

Good old fashioned foot work. Cold email the places you know that use your tech stack.

Introduce yourself and what you have to offer. Show that you understand their business and some of the technical problems they may experience.

Ask for referrals after contracts complete.

Open source contributions and presenting at industry conferences go a long way to establishing an air of expertise; carry yourself like an expert and you almost always will get a second look from a potential client.

I have interviewed a fair number of people for different positions over the years, here's my 2p:

1. I would look at your CV and see your narrow focus but I would still be wondering based on your experiences whether you could move to the technology we use.

2. Good/great developers seem to be in short supply, if you can prove your ability to understand code, build robust things and ship you would be just fine in my interview.

3. I think you would find a lot of very similar technology in the Java field and it wouldn't be a huge hurdle for you to pick that up if you have a good and deep understanding of how you currently deliver apps using ASP. If you could show on your portfolio how you have picked up Java/Ruby/Python/whatever based on your 20 years of experience and show you understand "how things work" rather than the nitty gritty of a the language then you would beat a lot of the people we interview.

In short, if you came to an interview for a Java job I would be more interested in how easy you would be able to learn what we do with Spring etc and how much and how deeply you understood the stack you were working with rather than worrying too much about you not have "5 years of Spring MVC" or whatever other blurbs HR stuck on the job description. I've interviewed a lot of people who have no clue whatsoever how MVC works and have no notion about how things fit together to make a system, they just fill in the gaps in the Spring/Hibernate/library config and write a few lines of code and "it just works". If you have the deep knowledge I think you can easily take a senior/architect role in Java-land.

I guess I wish the positions I applied for had hiring managers as open as you are. To be honest, with the majority of the places I've applied to, I get no response at all.

Got to watch out for the HR filter. Often at bigger companies, hiring managers don't even see a resume unless it meets the criteria they specify on it. That means people like you with related, but different experience get cut out when you could still be a good match. Broken system.

Any advice for how to get past that filter? Things to put on the resume, specific things to say in a cover letter, etc.?

Networking helps here. I've never gotten a job where my resume had to be filtered through HR first. You need to know someone who is or knows a hiring manager. Get out there and make friends!

echoing what mlitchard said. Networking is a big help. Besides that, look at what is on the job posting. Try to use the same key words in your resume/cover letter. Not sure how well it would work, but addressing differences in the cover letter could work to get it past the HR and into the manger's hands.

Make your resume a little more general. If it looks like you're a one stack guy, they'll assume that's your main skill set.

Focus on the general concepts you've applied to your jobs and the broad strokes of what you bring.

The good ones will learn whatever tools are necessary for the job. The good companies know this.

The HR barrier is admittedly present in a lot of places… the best advice there, probably, is to try to network a little to get in through the side door.

That HR barrier is really difficult to understand. There are so many libraries and frameworks these days, and companies are looking for a person with particular experience in a particular combination of things. It doesn't seem to matter if you know similar tech and are willing to switch over.

I wonder how much good talent is never even looked at because of this.

I know there was the developer agent idea (agent like an entertainment agent) floating around several years back. But this area really seems like an industry ripe for innovation. Starfighters.io has a take on the security world, but anyone out there looking for a business idea: there seems to be a large group of talented engineers out there who are being passed over by HR systems today.

Assuming HR hasn't boarded up all the side doors.

Study up on Microsoft SQL Server and present yourself as someone to fill a DBA role. Pay attention especially to the basics: backup, restore, migration, import and export of data and Microsoft Report Services. Read the fine print about SQL Server version differences (nobody else will).

SQL Server is in high demand and most programmers have little interest in the DBA role, yet it is crucial (read "highly-valued") in most organizations.

Organizations want young programmers/developers. But when they think of DBAs they want someone with experience. So grow a beard!8-))

To add onto this, being a "developer DBA" can be clutch. OP has a background in application programming and can relate to other groups a lot easier and inherently understand pain points and reasoning behind certain architecture decisions.

As a young-ish developer mostly interested in database and backend work, what skills/path would you say is necessary to function in a full-fledged DBA role?

I'm finding in my contracting work that my database skills are above-average and usually one of the big things that I'm relied upon for and I think this is worth pursuing.

Honestly? From what I've seen, the main skill would be, don't go into a DBA role. DBAs are operational/administrative roles by nature (maintain the DB, account/security stuff, respond to server/DB issues). What, I think, you're getting at is more architecture and system building. Having the ability to consider DB bottlenecks and interactions along with a strong foundation in application programming will provide a great base to do interesting work.

Then again, maybe DBAs aren't as bogged down by the minutiae in some places and have more of an ability to troubshoot and resolve DB code/structure problems. It always seems like that's their job but they never have enough time to properly do it with the myriad of other requests.

Years ago I worked at a financial that had a large tech staff but we only had one full-time DBA. He was a really young, sharp guy and he got to work with basically every department in the company helping them out with stuff. He had his own office, nobody ever disturbed him, he only had to report to one person (rarely) and he got paid fantastically well.

Looked like a sweet deal.

I've been a DBA officially and unofficially off and on my whole career. On one hand it is great. UIs and front end software is like fashion and always changing. What lives on is the data those programs generate. Understanding that the data will outlive almost any program put in front of is a good thing to remember.

On the other hand there is a lot of pressure as the DBA. Backups, redundancy, security, etc... all fall onto the DBA to get done and done right. Fat finger a script and blow away a key table sucks (a DBA isn't a DBA until they have done this once), but it drives the point home that backups, backups, backups are key.

EDIT

The other part is the blame for lots of woes will end up on the DBAs desk. I'm a fix it and move on kind of person, but if you take things like that personally a DBA position might not be for you.

I've had unofficial DBAs roles in the past, and it wasn't really the type of job that suited me personally (I like UI work as much as db work). I know they're in big demand though, so definitely a good path to look into if you're okay with all of the things listed.

Yeah, it can also be an always on-call group with limited options supporting software written by dozens/hundreds of different devs with little to no DB knowledge but is crucial to running the company.

One thing to explore is reporting. Reporting on large enough data, putting into a data warehouse/star schema, etc., gets you into "business intelligence" territory. That puts you in touch with a lot of managers, providing clear value. Data visualization (dashboards) can be fun, too.

From personal observation, giardini's suggestion to grow a Unix beard might actually be a solid step #1.

I can't do the beard, but I'm basically an oldschool unix neckbeard anyway.

Good advice. In some situations you'll get better pay too.

An honest personal assessment: the bird has flown on your days as a pure coder. Even if you don't particularly want a management position, focus on that aspect of your career. It's going to be hard to convince a prospective company that you're worth the money as a developer if all you have to offer is 12 years of ASP.

I ran the software dept for a small consulting company and yes you'd probably never get a call back from me if you were applying purely as a developer. While we have hired late 30-somethings developers, it's usually because they offer some fairly unique tech skillset (i.e., a few years of production-quality FPGA experience, not a couple months dorking around with "whatever hot new technology" on github--that's something I look for in a fresh-grad). So I think for a purely tech role, beyond getting another job at a similar company doing similar tech, you're a long shot at best.

But beyond that, the one thing that would case me to look at your resume is if you were wanting a leadership position and had the corresponding soft skills and experience. It sounds like you do, so highlight that, and work on it. The advantage there is that management skills: talking to stakeholders, setting expectations and timeframes, finalizing deliverables...are all applicable no matter what the underlying technology. So there's no reason you'd have to limit yourself to ASP management roles.

My previous company had lots of young developers doing engineering with lots of new technologies, but they'd have never delivered a thing had they not been guided by some experienced devs who actually spent most of their time in Excel (or trello or Jira or whatever we happened to be using to manage the particular project).

You mention age, but then go on to say skillset. Do you mean to say regardless of skillset you are going to pass on 30-somethings? Now that the computing field is finally aging, there are going to be more and more 30/40/50 somethings pure coders. Passing on them because age alone is a huge mistake in my mind.

This is distinctly the opposite of what I said. We have hired 30-somethings based on skillsets. We have also hired 30-somethings based on soft skills. We would not hire 30-something "pure developers" based on "potential, potentially outside their skillset" though because it's far cheaper to hire fresh grads, and you just have to assume that someone in their late 30's that's looking to change is just a burnout. It's a tough world.

I have programmed on all kinds of stacks, and while I understand a lot of the .NET disdain, I’m perplexed by perceptions that years of .NET experience is somehow worthless or less than noteworthy? Beyond the stigma of being a Microsoft product, there seems to be a misconception that .NET devs are dragging and dropping junk through an IDE. Why wouldn’t their "12 years of ASP" include obtaining good debugging habits, writing readable code, building production ready systems that still perform at scale, and a knack for constant improvement? Someone who is a craftsman on one tool will share many qualities with a craftsman from another.

I don't think it's a disdain for .Net. It's more of a disdain for ASP.Net Webforms. I'm definitely not a youngster (I'm 41). But he's been doing Asp.Net Webforms for 12 years. He hasn't shown a "knack for constant improvement". He hasn't been keeping up with the frameworks and technologies that MS has been pushing - Asp.Net MVC, WebApi, Entity Framework, etc.

If he has been doing WebForms instead of MVC, he's probably not up on all of the basic table stakes client side stuff like BootStrap and JQuery.

I know at 41 years old, if I want to stay in development and not go into management and command the salary I want, I can't be complacent. The minute that my company stagnates, I must find another job. That means for me, being a full stack .Net developer:

1. Web - Angular, JQuery, CSS, TypeScript, and Bootstrap 2. Server side web - Asp.Net MVC, WebApi, WCF 3. Knowing how to speak the language of an architect (DDD, Design Patterns,everything that Martin Fowler writes) 4. Database theory and maintenance and EF. 5. Testing - front end and back end automation testing.

I'm not bragging, I know lots of developers who can tick off these checkboxes. If you're not willing to aggressive learn, this isn't the field for you.

I just wanted to add that I do have professional WebApi, Angular and JQuery work on my resume, but the big thing that seems to be the blocking point is MVC. I don't code traditional webforms development anymore (I don't use controls anymore, it's more JS calling json services), but there's no resume-friendly name for it because I'm not using a specific framework, and I'm guessing that to an HR person, all that means is "not MVC".

It's a crap-shoot on which technology is going to take off. Microsoft was pushing heavily that MVC was just another way to do things during the events I went to. I tried to push the boundaries of what my company let me work in, and that just happened to not be where the market went.

In hindsight, keeping my eye open on the job market is something I should have done more.

Another honest assessment: if MVC is the only thing blocking you from various better positions, just say you've got it on your resume. Then spend a couple days after work going through MVC tutorials. "New Project->Web->MVC->OK. F5." Bam, you've got MVC experience.

Seriously it's way easier than webforms so if you've got that much webforms experience, you'll have absolutely no problem picking it up. Within a week you'll know 95% of what you'd need to know on most tech interviews and you'll do fine at your new job. Stuff varies so much company-to-company that MVC will not even be one of the top five differences.

In my previous response I was thinking more you were looking for some big change into something very cutting-edge. That would be a more difficult proposition. But if you're just looking to go from webforms to MVC, or even to a Java-based infrastructure, it's not a big hurdle. Like others have said, the HR filter will be the biggest problem. There will be an age bias too, you'll just have to deal with that.

FWIW I don't think you should expect a paycut or a cut in "rank" either just because of changing technologies. You'll get caught up on the technical side very quickly. Outside of extremely technical companies, "rank" is far more about knowing how to get through a release cycle coordinate teams than it is about specific technical knowledge.

All that said, just be warned, working on websites in MVC (or really any technology) is really no more interesting than Webforms. (In fact webforms may be more interesting because you get to invent your own way around its inadequacies).

I'm not saying that the world is fair, or unfair, or even that I'm fair, or unfair. I'm just saying that as a person (with limited time as we all are) who works for a small fairly innovative consulting company, a resume that shows 12 years of ASP dev will get pushed to the back of the list. I don't have an HR dept. That person may be a perfect fit. This is the guy's best possible chance. Nonetheless, I have limited time and will interview fresh-outs or jr devs with more diverse skillsets first, and an old-dog ASP dev only as a last resort. Diamond in the rough? Well, I have no idea about the diamond thing, all I know upfront is it's certainly the rough, and probably not worth my time.

Thanks for the honest assessment. It's definitely something I need to consider.

apply your self ( most valuable asset, since that has yielded you success so far ) to learning MVC, and maybe Reactive or single direction of data flow architecture.

here's the kicker: only learn so much that you know a little more than the other guys in the companies doing web forms, and then

market yourself as the guy

who knows the legacy code base, knows the organizational in and outs, knows the systems, and who's going to help transition them to MVC ( and newer tech )

so you're a guy ( or gal ) with little experience in MVC teaching folks with no experience in MVC, how to transition to MVC.

this is a niche, and you'd be perfect for it. it'll be stimulating as there is the conceptual challenge of bridging the two realms, the satisfaction of using your extensive experience, and the excitement of growing yourself into something new.

i'm excited for you. not many people will be able to be at the right place and the right time to do this. and it sounds like, with a bit of results, this could spin into your own consulting or dev shop serving this technical debt.

this path works and the future is bright for people like you.

This does sound like a path, and like I mentioned in another post, it'd be easy to take an opensource webforms project and convert it. I'll probably try that out soon.

You might be interested in https://info.covermymeds.com/ruby/

Ruby on Rails opportunity for java and .net developers; note:I am not affiliated with covermymeds, heard about it on the Ruby Rogues podcast.

Thanks, will check them out.

My brother has worked for them for 4-5 years now. It's a nice place to work and has a great culture after visiting there a few times and once for lunch. One of the few places I'd consider working for in Columbus as a developer without having to do a lot of heavy investigating.

I don't work there myself, though we have a fairly similar culture at my work, just no free lunches everyday.

Yeah, a good friend of mine works there and loves it. They seem to treat their devs really well. And, from my own experience healthcare is a great field as a dev.

Thanks for sparking this discussion!

I'm a senior dev, but still relatively early in my career (~8 years). I've been thinking about your exact situation a lot lately as I have interviewed several candidates from various backgrounds. I see a lot of people with lots of experience, but they didn't make the cut after taking our coding tests and technical interviews that younger less experienced devs breezed through. I wonder if I will be in the same boat in 5-10 years myself because I haven't kept up with the newest technology. Like you, I have no desire to become a manager and I'm quite happy being an individual contributor.

Also being a relatively new Dad (toddler and a newborn on the way) only makes it that much harder to keep up!

I'm in a somewhat similar boat in that I've too much developer experience to be a junior programmer but not as much experience in modern stacks (I've about 5 years on modern web dev but two of that was mostly Drupal) before that it was all line-of-business internal stuff for business.

I solved that problem by bootstrapping a startup with consulting/development for other startups that are viable but weak technically, this gives me a lot of variety in side work while also funding my main startup.

In addition I'm currently in the process of setting up another 'startup' as a non-profit (which I'm funding out of pocket until I have a complete product at which point I'll create a charity, assign all IP to it and open the source, I wanted to pay it forward), that one is going to be a complete health management system for patients with chronic or long term medical issues (this one came about as a result of my having chronic issues essentially I'm building the thing I looked for when I got ill and didn't exist) - which complies with all the standards and legislation applicable to local and national government systems, effectively I'm building the system that should already exist for end users.

I have a bootstrapped project already, but as you probably can infer in my postings, I'm not good at sales. I'm toying around with finding a business partner and maybe get more out of it. Side projects will probably always be a part of what I do, but I really want to find something to replace the 9-6 I have now.

I had a web-version of my application (as a web/data analyst) in German[1] that nearly every time at least created a response.This differentiated me enough, to get around the HR-filter, that was mentioned in another reply to you.

I do not know the style you were using, but doing things differently, showcasing things you are able to do and just going the extra mile to show you really want that job oftentimes helps. At least here in Germany.

OK; the wording is somewhat cordial, but that is just to showcase my personality. I strongly believe, that being rejected for this just is a great selector for places, I would not want to work.

[1]: http://cv.schriftrolle.de/.old/tuicruises/ This is about 1,25 years old and I did get the job (but am not working there anymore, having found quite a better place to be).

My business partner is a graphic designer and is strong on day to day business stuff which is a huge help as frankly if its not code I'd forget my head.

That might be a good way to go.

I definitely do not have the level of experience that you have so take this with a grain of salt. I have seen and worked in a lot of companies that have a very heavy portion of their code base in web forms. Many of these companies have been working to transition to MVC but it takes a longer time the larger your legacy beast is.

I would suggest finding a job where you can leverage your experience in .NET Web Forms, while picking up the pedigree for MVC.

I haven't found positions like that open to people without MVC experience on their resume, but that seems like a good possibility to focus on. I could easily take an open source webform app and convert it to MVC as a portfolio builder.

Are you still working at the job that is imposing asp.net web forms on you?

If so, maybe you could make an argument to adopt new technologies there while keeping your large pay check. If you make a business focused case for adopting new tech, you might find success.

Problem to Solve:

So, how does adopting new tech save money and/or make money?

Crude Proposed Solution:

Talented developers care about their tools, so if you are using dated techniques / technologies you are alienating potential new hires which could add significant value to the company.

The younger programmers coming out of school do not want to program in COBOL. They want to invest in technologies which will increase their marketability as a developer.

So by adopting newer technologies / techniques you reduce your risk of becoming a slave to a dwindling developer community. A community which has stopped growing and is bleeding devs, starting with the most talented. You also open up your company up to new opportunities where they can higher younger talented devs for cheap. You can mitigate problems caused by inexperience by giving them specialist roles which will decrease the amount ramp up time required for them to start adding value to the company.

Apologies:

This is a very knee jerk response. I do not feel as though I have proposed an actionable plan that is well thought out. I hope I have proposed an idea that is worth exploring.

Persuade your existing company to adopt new tech in terms of saving/making money and by reducing future risk (a potentially mortal risk) of problems caused by tech rot.

An angle on this that may work is to just introduce the new tech on something not very important but still useful.

A decent argument can be that plain old technology upgrades at some point are going to be gigantic herculean efforts if the same old language/framework is used for a long period of time.

And you are more susceptible to security issues and/or ridiculous "extended support" contracts the longer a tech is kept around - to the point where it is difficult to patch, etc.

> I kept my current job because of the money and flexibility they gave me to stay, > but now that working here isn't worth it anymore,

So, what does 'worth it' mean to you? I see money and flexibility as the plusses of your current job... maybe that's all you need from the job. Could you keep this one and do something additional to get at whatever 'worth it' means to you?

I thought money and flexibility would be enough, but working on simple client requests is boring me to death, and I miss the ownership of working on a product. I'm sure I could milk this out until I retired, but there are other issues with the company, and I don't want to be miserable at something that takes so much of my day.

I've found the principle 'Run toward things, not away from things' to be helpful. If you don't know what'll really make you happy, you've got a shot at winding up just like you are now, somewhere else.

Finding, or starting, a relevant project, using technology you want to emphasize, seems to me like a step you could take independent of what you do about the job. As for the job, I think what they say about 'Change your organization, or change your organization' is true.

Of course, in similar shoes, I did something radical. I wasn't fulfilled in my monied, flexible job, so I'm taking a leap at what I really want to do: teach in college. It started when I came home from work one day, with a plan for how I could help local high schools with their AP classes and computer clubs, and my wife asked whether that would really do the trick of making me happy. I said 'No' and, 4 years later,I'm now ABD on a PhD, and could tell long stories of the highs and lows. It looks like it'll work out, but there's still a really strong case for having kept the boring job and looking for fulfillment elsewhere. Look up Eric Hoffer, who was a longshoreman by day, and philosopher and author by night.

No job lasts forever. That money and flexibility could disappear at the drop of an email. It sounds like his current job is comfortable, but it doesn't demonstrate to his next employer that he's relevant. I'd worry about that.

1. pick an industry, not particular technologies. For example if you think Internet companies like "FANG" group are more promising, try to join one of'em; 2. become familiar with a more adaptive language like Java; 3. prefer back-end over front-end as experiences/technologies are more transferable; 4. stay sharp on algorithmic problems; 5. keep learning;

> prefer back-end over front-end as experiences/technologies are more transferable

I'm curious to know more about what you mean by this...

Being a senior dev doesn't mean 20 years of experience on every part of the stack. It means you deliver value even when things get tough. MVC is so ridiculously simple compared to WebForms I don't even know why you wouldn't sell yourself as top of the bill senior for projects that are MVC based.

I agree with you, but there is still convincing hiring managers that it's okay to hire someone who technically doesn't have professional experience in ASP.NET MVC when the position is primarily that.

Here is a company I have worked in. They have legacy systems that are pretty heavily Web Forms and there is a lot of SQL work too. They are making the transition to MVC and ORMs in a lot of the legacy stuff.

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/75235/principal-softwa...

Hope it goes well for you.

I guess because I don't really have the experience of things going wrong there. I can tune a troubling sproc into performing well, but that won't make me seem like a senior dev when EF isn't syncing with an autogenerated db properly and I haven't been through that scenario before.

I'm honest with myself about what I know and don't know, and I'm willing to work on side projects on my own to learn more if I felt hiring managers would count it for something. I'm just at the crossroads of what I should try to focus on next.

MVC is a lot easier for someone who grew up developing on the web. But if you aren't skilled at hand rolling your own HTML and you don't know client side frameworks that can take the place of the bloated but easy to use WebForm controls, MVC is a lot harder. WebForms hide the real web from developers.

I think this advice might apply to your situation at least partially: http://www.jasonswett.net/how-to-get-a-job-using-a-technolog...

First of all, avoid the term "senior dev". That means 5 to 7 years of experience. You're way past that.

Next: Web programming is something junior devs can do. (Maybe not as well, but they can do it, and for less money.) You need to move on to harder things, where your experience is worth more money.

What harder things? You mentioned SQL Server. You say it's "losing relevance with the ORMs/EFs of the world", but there's more to the world than that, and I strongly doubt SQL Server is going away. Find places where it is in use, and go there.

Alternately, you can try to move up to architect of someplace with a big web presence, but I'm less clear on how you make that shift.

To give you a philosophical answer. People usually have two situations in life where they make such decision. One where Passion wins and other where Salary(benefits). Almost overtime Passion gives job satisfaction over Passion unless you deal with Finance areas like Stocks, bonds, insurance, investment etc You are want to work for Passion, you would have to focus on what is relevant in coming future and align your interest with that. There will be fit somewhere. Once you do that, build a portfolio for the future. Not what you know, Not what you have but what you want to be known for.

Hope this helps

I'd suggest you to learn and share your progress with outer world via blog. You could have at least 2 advantage:

- You are going to present yourself an authority after certain period of time.

- Learning new technology and be accountable to outer world.

This is what I have been doing on my blog(http://blog.adnansiddiqi.me/)

If you want, you may make guest posts related to things you are learning.

I moved into sales engineering - it's cool to work on the sales team, and it gives one a wider grasp of the development organization.

I've found myself where you are at multiple points in my career. And each time, I made a leap to a new domain. Not wildly, but to an immediately adjacent domain that excited me.

With 20 years of experience you potentially bring far more to the table than "just" your dev skills. The great thing about being a developer is that you touch a lot of other domains...often at a fairly detailed level of understanding (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the credit card industry by developing commercial credit card processing software for gasoline dispensers many years ago).

Of course, this is how many devs end up becoming managers...though you say that's not where you want to go. But there are other paths as well. For example, a Product Manager with strong development skills can have a significant edge over someone that's come up strictly through marketing.

People who can straddle the boundaries between domains of knowledge have unique value. At this point in your career, you likely possess knowledge and skill beyond just ASP.net development...skills that startups or companies would find valuable.

I originally came out of physics around the time of the collapse of the SSC project. I saw colleagues with freshly minted PhD's in theoretical physics (NOT a marketable degree...except for driving a cab) go off to Wall Street and become quants...and do quite well.

So the core question is: are you locked into thinking of yourself as just one thing ("developer"), in which case the search is for what kind of developer you want to be next...or can you think of yourself as someone whose years of experience bring unique and valuable expertise...in which case the search should be broader and more unconventional.

It's less about what the external trends are; more about how you can reset your internal self-image...and your willingness to make the investment to bring that into reality.

Of course that means adopting entirely new strategies for finding where your skills have value...those types of jobs aren't posted on HR job boards.

Personally, I've made some huge career and domain jumps over the years (physics, software, large-scale databases, robotics, biotech...and various startups). It can be challenging...and a little scary (but only in the roller-coaster/skydiving sense), but It's also made for an exciting life that's largely been quite financially rewarding.

Never be afraid to jump out of the box...

I'm not necessarily afraid to jump out of the box, I'm just unsure which direction to jump. I could work myself into a product manager (I've done stints to fill in for short staff), but I guess it would take some research to see if reinventing myself in any specific direction is worth the effort in the long run, because in the short term, I expect to not be considered for a senior-level in that position, same as with any other development skill.

But you mention "adopting entirely new strategies for finding where your skills have value...those types of jobs aren't posted on HR job boards.", which would bypass the HR filter that I would worry about. Do you have any examples of these types of strategies? Is it more of networking? Cold calling into industries you've worked in? Anything that works for people who aren't natural sellers?

I've held 6 "normal" jobs (W-2 employee) in my career. I've never submitted an unsolicited resume or a CV...I've never gone through HR (except for onboarding after I was hired). I was asked to join and worked from the beginning directly with manager (or board of directors) that I'd be reporting to.

Here's the dirty secret: A hiring manager ALWAYS has more political power than ANYONE in HR. But in larger organizations hiring managers are also very risk averse (and political cowards) and therefore will always defer to HR. This is why HR is so out of control in most companies!

So either avoid large organizations and focus on startup, growth phase and SMB companies...or find a way to directly reach the ear of the hiring managers in a manner that reduces their level of perceived risk in choosing you.

Here are strategies I've used:

1. First understand how businesses and hiring managers perceive value (it's NOT as obvious as you might think!)

Then:

2. Write - blogs, articles, comments in places like LinkedIn groups where hiring managers might be loitering

3. Talk - conference talks, training, do a podcast, do webinars...but always with an eye towards message and audience (junior programmers will NOT be hiring you)

4. Network - take any opportunity to be visible and demonstrate expertise and knowledge. And tell everyone you know what it is you're looking for.

It not unlike marketing a product. Find where the audience hangs out, figure out what they value, and then communicate that value and be visible.

This isn't a "next week" solution, but could certainly be a 90-120 day solution!

As an example of one possible direction, I've seen some awesome product managers that came out of development. Did they have the Marketing degree or the 20 years of experience...NO!

But brought a unique understanding of how products were built and how to communicate the needs of the business back to the development team in a way that NO non-technical person would ever be capable of doing.

So don't compare yourself apples-to-apples with those already in the job (whatever role you're shooting for). In a certain sense, you have to BE what you want to become, even before you get there.

The truth is, there's nothing easier than doing tomorrow whatever it was that you did today and yesterday. Change is hard, and the hardest part of change is mastering the interior game. Knowing what you want and becoming that person.

the last 3 pos i had i "created" them myself by reaching out to people who needed something. one i responded to a job ad and ended up being hired to build something different on much better terms ( essentially as a consultant ). one i emailed 110 people in the space i wanted to get paid to work, got 10 replies 3 interview and 2 offers. one i pitched a project and got funding for equity. in all 3 cases i ensured i got people to pay me for me learning something new. so it was definitely a case of me not knowing how to do it when i approached them, yet i knew i could do it. another way to say that is i knew i could work it out. you sound like someone who can teach themselves that too. getting the work is like getting dates, it works to ask a lot of people, then care for, manage and nurture those connections. or like fishing, you got to cast a lot of times to get a couple nibbles, to land the biggun. you got this.

Have you tried working backwards? I mean, thinking about what you might want to be doing in 5 or 10 years? Then taking steps that get you there. It sounds cheesy but if you know where you're heading you'll make better choices in the short term.

I don't like mvc much.. But you can build good /powerful apps with json.net and webform. My biggest mistake was mvc itself.Too much file.Should focus on deliver instead of refining technology..

That sort of goes along with the question of is pivoting myself into a front end engineer worth the effort? I'm comfortable using ajax and json services to create a UI--that's how I write my "webform" pages today.

What I hear is that you have been successful (or think you have been) in quite a few different things which you didn't really want to do.

Chances are, you will be successful and unhappy at the next job.

No, I've been happy in my career. I want to find positions that I enjoy again, but it just seems like that sector of the programming world left me behind while I was selling out.

Then consider this: There are women who participated in a Djangogirls workshop and are working as developers one year later.

If total beginners to programming can achieve this, you can learn any new technology in a breeze. You just won't have the certification which no one else in the field has anyway!

Try a tech bootcamp (codefellows.org) to freshen up your skill set, most of the reputable ones have some form of career counseling, and industry connections?

I will suggest you should take a big pay cut and try to rebuild my skills with a company open to a senior dev without the exact experience.

Build a tool for developers just like yourself. Apply what you have learnt to the benefit of the next gen.

Where are you located?

Let's talk, emailing you now...

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