#CareerStruggles #AdaptingToChange #UpskillOpportunities
🌟 Are you facing the challenge of finding new job opportunities after being laid off from a long-term position? You’re not alone. Many professionals are experiencing the same struggle of feeling like their skills are no longer valued in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing job market. But fear not, there are steps you can take to adapt and thrive in this new landscape.
Here’s how you can navigate this challenging time and position yourself for success:
Understanding the Shift in Demand
The first step in overcoming this hurdle is to understand the shift in demand for specific skills and technologies in the job market. As you mentioned, many job listings now require experience with front end frameworks like React and back end frameworks like Laravel. It can be frustrating to feel like your years of expertise in LAMP development are suddenly being overlooked, but it’s important to recognize the evolving needs of businesses and the technology industry as a whole.
Embracing the Opportunity to Upskill
Instead of feeling discouraged by the lack of opportunities that align with your current skill set, view this as an opportunity to upskill and expand your knowledge base. Learning new technologies and frameworks like React, Vue, and Laravel can open up a whole new world of job prospects and career advancement. Embracing this mindset will not only make you more marketable to potential employers, but it will also reinvigorate your passion for coding and development.
Exploring Learning Resources
Thankfully, there are countless resources available to help you learn and master these in-demand technologies. Online learning platforms, coding bootcamps, and community college courses offer comprehensive programs on React, Vue, Laravel, and other modern frameworks. Additionally, there are forums, meetups, and networking events where you can connect with professionals who have successfully made similar transitions in their careers.
Building a Portfolio of Projects
As a seasoned developer, you already have the advantage of practical experience. Use this to your advantage by building a portfolio of projects that showcase your ability to adapt to new technologies. Create web apps, CMS platforms, and storefronts using React, Vue, and Laravel to demonstrate your proficiency in these areas. Having a strong portfolio can often speak louder than years of experience on a resume.
Networking and Seeking Mentorship
Don’t underestimate the power of networking and seeking mentorship during this transition. Connect with developers who have made the shift from LAMP to more modern frameworks and seek their guidance. Attend industry events, join online communities, and reach out to professionals on platforms like LinkedIn. Building a strong support network can provide invaluable insights and opportunities.
Staying Resilient and Positive
Lastly, it’s important to stay resilient and positive throughout this journey. It’s understandable to feel frustrated and discouraged, but remember that this is just a temporary challenge. By committing to upskilling and embracing change, you will position yourself for long-term success in the ever-evolving tech industry.
In conclusion, the shift in demand for specialized skills and technologies can be overwhelming, but it’s not insurmountable. By embracing the opportunity to upskill, leveraging learning resources, building a strong portfolio, networking, and maintaining a positive mindset, you can navigate this challenging time and emerge stronger than ever in your career.
What are your thoughts on this approach? Have you experienced a similar career transition? Let’s continue the conversation and support one another in this journey of adaptation and growth.
I’m right there with you. I have about 15 years of experience, been doing this since back in the Flash days. I transisitioned over to HTML5, JS, Bootstrap, jQuery, etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of the companies I’ve worked for have had no interest in keeping up with technology, so I’ve had to learn it on the side. I’ve taught myself React and other modern technologies.
But even with all my experience, I feel like the industry has left me behind. I lost my job last summer and have had a hell of a fucking time trying to get back on my feet.
I went from having recruiters calling me constantly about two years ago, and now I can’t even get a fucking interview.
Maybe for very small companies, but I’m surprised they really care about your experience there. It’s not like these are rocket science, and I’ve found that larger companies select for general aptitude, not specific domain knowledge. I’m about to head into the job market, and I also don’t have these skills, but for now I’m targeting larger companies where it’s not relevant. And for the smaller ones, I think you can make the case that you can pick it up quickly.
Spend some time researching about the frameworks most likely to get you a job, and spend some time learning them and building some projects. Put that on your resume, and do the usual job search stuff. Given your experience, you should be able to get up to speed quickly.
You got this!
In business, nobody owes you anything.
Any employer is going to say: I need someone to do X. In a head to head comparison, is person Y better at X or is person Z better at X. If you want the job, you have to be better than the other candidates. Likewise, your current employer doesn’t care about your future employ-ability. Take 10% of your time at work to learn new skills relevant to your career.
In the future I’d like to get a comfy government job to avoid the rat race and changing tech stacks so often. If I can’t even do that then I’ll just go into nursing
Government. They’ll generally be moving slower and have some wiggle room on experience and whatnot. Rather proud of old school LAMP folks I got trained up into modern practices that had a good time of it.
Dude, just learn larvael. Best backend framework to have existed. Â
 Also lean a SPA front-end framework. I can totally understand why jquery is outdated. Modern day front end web dev is completely different than how it was done decades ago. Instead of html, js, css, and perhaps some templating from the webserver, nowadays you mostly write spaghetti code in react.Â
Unfortunately it’s not you but the market. Now a candidate must have experience in identical roles / tech stacks across companies of varying sizes, demonstrating not only proficiency in the current position but also the experience for how the position might evolve. Otherwise, hiring managers tend to hold out for that ‘perfect’ candidate, believing a unicorn is in the pipeline or just around the corner.
Oh that’s easy just lie on your resume and say you have experience… after you learn laravel of course. Tell them you have like 2 years of experience at some made up job then put a burner phone number for the company contact in case they call. Or you can say you worked for yourself under a sole proprietorship which used laravel, boom 2yrs experience. Companies use every tactic they can to pad their profits, I see nothing wrong with being equally devious in return.
Doesnt seem to matter what tech it is, if you know it, the job postings will ask for something else. This, precisely, is why I never advocate chasing the tech.
Get some familiarity with it. Your experience isnt worthless, you just need to pick up on the ins and outs of a specific framework. Which is far easier and less complicated than picking up a new language.
Yes, I was thinking about this exact thing myself just the other day. Tech moves so fast that whatever people were working on 10 years ago is irrelevant, and the same will be for Vue, React, etc 10 years from now (probably less). It seems the only option is to job hop every 2-3 years, just gain a strong grasp of the fundamentals that will never go out of vogue (Java, Python, SQL, etc), and/or retire from SWE after 10 years. This is really a ridiculous industry LOL. I’m planning to just go into research once my time is up as a developer.
Laravel – 13 years old
React – 11 years old
Vue – 10 years old
These aren’t new. You missed the boat. If you have the ability to learn them then do it – put them on your resume and someone will give you a coding exercise to show it
It also doesn’t look great that you worked somewhere for so long and had no say in the frameworks or design decisions that were made. It’s up to an engineer to understand industry trends and how to adopt technology improvements. Shifting blame onto the team or clients is a quick way to fail an interview
I haven’t ever worked at a place longer than 5 years. Companies often fall into technological ruts, especially smaller companies. Also, you’re probably missing out on compensation if you aren’t moving every few years.
If I hadn’t job hopped like 6 years ago, I’d still be doing obsolete front end work too. But I hopped, started doing angular and soon after ended up getting on the job training in react. The only real benefit of working for the giant companies is that they are happy to throw training at people to get them to not leave. So now I have 5+ years of react under my belt.
If you’re really down bad then educate yourself on those technologies, get decent enough to feel comfortable using them in a professional setting, and then lie and say you used them at a previous job – you have the ability to do the work and you have the professional experience to land interviews.
Is it unethical? Yeah probably. You know what else is unethical? Being homeless and hungry as an experienced engineer, do what you gotta do to survive.
“how obnoxious some of them are”
This is the wrong attitude to have. Try going in with an open mind about a new stack. You should have the fundamentals to be able to learn new things, and who knows, you might find you like it. At any rate, being open to change and growth is the mindset you need to embrace if you’re trying to convince someone that you can learn their stack.
If you’re a good software engineer then technologies shouldn’t matter that much, obviously take a course or two on udemy to not be completely out of the loop. However what really matters is how well you can turn business requirements into code, that is a far greater skill which you should already be good at.
Technologies change all the time we as developers just adapt to them.
Fake it till you make it. Get up to speed on the latest tech and then sprinkle in those skills in your resume. You’ll have to BS your way through the interviews and ramp up quickly but this is how this business works.
Web dev has also been a stupid circle jerk of constant change with very little benefit.
My 2 cents: invest some of the time that you’re using to look for a new job into creating something with those things that your job listings want:
> Laravel experience, React experience, Laravel with Vue experience, or some variation in between
Just make some kind of demo, doesn’t really matter exactly what it is. But that allows you to put it on your resume and will hopefully make it not go directly to the discard pile.
so you spend a weekend writing some shitty proof-of-concept in [flavor of the week JS framework] so you can slap it on your resume. That helps get you passed the resume and recruiter screen.
Then once you’re talking to someone technical you can explain that you don’t have a ton of experience in that specific thing but like anything else in this industry you can learn it.
I spent about as much time as a LAMP developer as you. You could retool in a few months taking some online courses on udemy that focus on React, Node and Express and learning AWS. That’s what I did a few years ago and it worked out.
You should apply anyway if you haven’t been applying. If you have 12 years of experience that means you should basically be an expert in LAMP, you should be able to pick up another stack relatively easily. Especially with modern AI assistance.
OP, I’m sorry that you’re going through this. Unfortunately, I’m in a similar boat and I’m curious for answers as well.
Anymore it seems like a developer is better off jumping ship 3-5 years to stay up to date on tech skills.
Ironically when I’ve tried to have the discussion in the experienced devs sub, they tend to think tenure is more important. I haven’t noticed that in my latest job searches. On the flip side, if I talk about this on the web dev sub, too many people get but hurt when I call their tech stack dated.
As a back-end developer I’m noticing the same trend. Everyone is expected to know Javascript and react now.
Edit: realize my comment wasn’t constructive, so I’ll add, I’m taking [https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux](https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux) course on udemy.
I am surprised you found a lot of Laravel. Last time I was looking for a job (I am a FS dev) I barely saw any and I thought Laravel was dying years ago
Oh LAMP is still very much in play, you’re just not talking to the right people. In fact you have the option to freelance making decent $ just on LAMP web dev.
Laravel is easy, you can probably say you know it then learn on the job without anyone noticing.
Skills should be transferable. Make a small project and say you have some experience. You know you are competent enough to compete and not only that, you have 12 years of experience
Learn some of them and put it on your resume
Now what I can suggest is research on resources that you wanted to learn to get a job.
Some of the paid version are valuable and can get you up to speed without you searching for free resources. This is one way to comeback as an individual contributor in this ever-changing landscape.
If it makes you feel any better I have multiple years of experience in React and I still don’t get interviews from the react job postings. Market is dog shit terrible.
Those skills should be transferable. I know it might not be as easy said and done, but you might convince someone that in fact, those skills would translate. You could easily pick up React or Laravel. You can pick them up now and make a local application and then let recruiters know that although those technologies are all the client ever needed, you do have experience / knowledge either way React or Laravel (the one you choose to learn now). Not sure if this advice is actually trash or not, but dont think that your 12 years of experience are useless.
This doesn’t help you now, but it’s important to pay attention to the market and the skills needed there, and if your current company isn’t giving you an opportunity to build those, go to a place where you can. Individual companies move slower than the industry overall (because it doesn’t make business sense to constantly rewrite functional things in a new language).
Normally you’d be able to get through anyways. However, right now layoffs have put a lot of experienced folk on the market, and if they have the right skills then companies don’t need to look at you.
It will probably come, but it is likely going to take a while.
Yes and this is why I tell everyone to interview for jobs each year even though you do not plan to leave. Coasting will catch up to you if you are in tech. If you want a job where you don’t have to learn much work government or defense.
>Every single freaking job listing wants Laravel experience, React experience, Laravel with Vue experience,
These tech stacks have dominated for years, some over 10 years.
The best time to learn trendy tech stacks was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.