Fortunately I'm employed but I have limited ideas on how to gain an edge for the next jobsearch, whenever that is.
1. Living in a tech hub like the Bay Area or Seattle. There may be tech hubs in RTP, Austin, Boston, etc but these tend to be inshoring offices and are oftentimes the first on the chopping block when offshoring is considered, because they never built the internal gravity needed to own P/L and roadmap, and those offices that did are few and far between.
2. Concentrate on doing a reputable online or part-time MSCS (eg. GATech, UIUC, UT Austin) and concentrating on fundamental courses. Coding is commodified, but programming isn't. Just understanding how to glue together Python, C/C++, or whatever language and associated libraries is not enough. Technical complexity is rising, and skills like understanding OS internals, understanding the fundamentals of SGD, or truly understanding how to derive a path tracing algorithm matters.
3. Hyper-specialize in a specific industry. "AI" is broad, just like "Mobile" was broad. What matters is how these platforms are applied to a specific industry subdomain. If I'm a cybersecurity company working on building an AI SOC, I'd rather hire Engineers who understand both core fundamentals of AI and Cybersecurity. If you are an engineer who can understand how to communicate both the business incentives as well as the engineering incentives you are worth your weight in gold.
The thing is, this isn't 2000 anymore. Eastern Europe, China, India, ASEAN, LATAM, and other regions of the world have fairly large and robust dev and tech scenes, and async+remote work has been proven out during COVID, thus removing one of the biggest barriers to offshoring. Additionally, there has been a reverse brain drain since the mid-2010s from the US to those countries that is making it easier to find talent to open an office following American norms.
I think as a mid-career engineer, you have the tools to survive this kind of a change. Any American SWE who graduated in the last 10 years is in a worse position because their universities failed them by watering down curricula to compete with bootcamps, reducing the business justification for building a domestic new grad pipeline aside from a couple top target programs.
As a former SWE-turned-PM, you won't survive as a PM or Designer if this is the reason you became one. This is how bad PMs become PMs.
The PM and Designer market is very competitive, and PMs are expected to be domain experts of their entire market category and have engineering chops to not get BSed by engineers and have showmanship to successfully manage sales.
> I simply lack the time (and brain, maybe)
I'd try to find the time if possible. Maybe take a single course a semester to ramp up. Despite the negativity on HN, there is a lot of interesting innovation in the AI/ML world - both on the math/algos side as well as the infra/platform side.
Alternatively, as mentioned by others, really leverage your network and friendships to get jobs. It's a superpower you have as an old-timer in the industry - leverage it.
Assuming you are located in a major tech hub, I don't see a reason that you should be too worried about chronic underemployment - especially in an AI-driven world which has made domain experience even more critical.
Honestly, just working on your side projects like you mentioned, and finding companies that are aligned with what your side projects aim to do puts you ahead of 95-97% of candidates.
The job hunt has been hard for people, but most candidates (especially the noisiest ones) don't really have your profile or background, but demand principal or staff level salaries and roles.
> thinking of something that combines left/right brain
Staff/Sr Staff/Principal Engineer or Architect type roles might fit the bill for you. And with your YoE, I think if you were to job hunt you could leverage your network to land that kind of role with ease.
Honestly, you are not the type of persona that has difficulty landing jobs (holding for geography ofc).
An AI/Vibe Coding market only makes domain experience more critical because hallucinations can cause significant monetary damage, so people who can act as the voice of reason for both the technical and business needs are extremely valuable.
If you can bridge the gap between nerd and corporate, you should be able to sail fine on to the next. You won't get any of that sweet prompt engineering money but pushing your skill set with a hint of AI should settle something.
I hope anyway.