He won't tell you. Nobody would tell well-paying niche to avoid competition.
I can't go into detail here though, as that would dox me, and I'd prefer my HN person not to mix with my IRL person.
The thing about niches is that you don't really "look for them" - you stumble over them as your skills develop. You -could- learn my job, of course, but it would take a lot of time and effort.
Part of what I'm saying I guess is that I am where i am because of a long career, amd I've accumulated a lot of experience, which is hard to pass on.
but, if i may ask, is that work that can be done 100% remote? would it make sense for an older software developer to pick that up? i am a generalist with lots of experience and i'd love to train up in a niche field to help me find work.
if you think that makes sense id appreciate if you could ask your IRL person to email me :-)
Clearly you -could- learn it now, but the effort would be immense. In the same way that you could learn to be a doctor, but at some point it becomes too much like hard work.
Also, unfortunately, there's a cost to entry. It's proprietary software, and you'd need around $5000 to get kitted out. Plus a lot of time.
On the other hand, yes it can be done remotely.
He just explained that he has no intention to dox himself plus with 31 years of experience he is one of the few in his field. Do you think you would be able to catch up and be able to stand your ground in this market with less than say 10 years? It wouldn't make sense and you probably wouldn't risk doing the change so even if he thought it made sense to send you an email, it would be for nothing. You can still get his advice and use it for the specialization you can get based on your current experience.
besides, the email would not have to even reference this thread. anyone reading who is in a similar situation could be responding and i would not be able say if it is the same person.
for the experience part he said he is training new people, not knowing what the field is, the question is if it is something a developer could specialize in. the answer could be "no". for all we know the specialization could be in bee-keeping.
so for that matter, if anyone has recommendations for a software developer on what to specialize in that they do not want to share publicly, please contact me.