Ask HN: What's the best way to reinvent myself?
I've been working as a software engineer in the US defense industry for the last 12 years. This was my first job after graduating from college. I have learned a great number of things at this job and have had some great experiences. Now I'm ready to move on. This is due to several factors, but there are two main ones. First, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with the huge bureaucracy in this company and it's not getting any better. Second, I feel like my technical skills are stagnating. The product I work on is a large legacy codebase and it's very hard to fit in any new technologies. When my company talks about using “new” technologies, these are things that are at least 5 years old. Many times, these technologies are already obsolete.
I'd like to get a new job doing some kind of web development. I know a little about it, but I really would like to sharpen my skills in this area. I have a side business where I've built and maintain a couple of e-commerce websites using PHP/MySQL. I've also done some work with Drupal and built a small site with web2py. I'm currently learning about Django and Codeigniter, but I haven't built anything of importance with them.
I'm really having a hard time trying to figure out how to reinvent myself and my professional experience. My resume looks very good if I'm trying to get another job in the defense industry. This is the last thing I want. I can learn and pick up new things quickly. I know how to design and write quality code. I have experience in large-scale systems architecture. I know how to properly design an API. I just don't have the experience of doing these things in the web domain.
I'd like to get some pointers from the HN community about how I should reinvent myself. Hopefully somebody out there has gone through a similar situation. I appreciate any feedback you can give.
I'd also like to get people's opinion on the effectiveness of an online profile at these sites:
VisualCV
Stackoverflow