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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.