... and now I'm job-hunting in earnest and jfcsstrrssfgchujbgfryhgftyhgerswww. I hope this is the right place to vent about this sort of thing, but I'm feeling so incredibly stressed and frustrated because I really want to change careers (TEFL teaching is a dead end, and the conditions have got so much worse in recent years) and I know I could do a junior frontend job perfectly well — I've put so much with into getting good at it in my own time — but it's beginning to dawn on me that there's basically no way in to the industry unless you know someone who can help you get a foot in the door.
I don't know where I'm going with this tbh — I just needed to vent somewhere — but it would be nice to hear any advice anyone can offer, or even just the lamentations of anyone with similar experiences...
Look for a job in government or for a think tank policymakers love bespoke data analytics and dashboards and whatnot, so if you can combine your coding abilities with a topic you're capable of illustrating interest in and some basic stats knowledge, you'll have a promising (and probably less technically challenging) career outside of tech.
There's also bioinformatics, biostatistics, and data science, all of which can come in the form of bolt-on certifications. I know more school is probably unappealing but they could be an easy way to make a lateral move.
I work for an FFRDC.
In the US, they have passed a continuing resolution and a lot of labs are nervous about the election. They are waiting to see how this turns out. That continuing resolution is going to make hiring difficult.
If Trump is elected, a lot of those jobs are cooked. Mine may be in jeopardy too. I'm applying for PhD programs in Europe to get ahead of the potential brain drain.
The only safe space right now is nuclear.
State and local governments and NGOs will continue to exist even if Trump wins; if anything, I see blue states trying to get more independence from the Feds if Trump wins so there might be more opportunities there. The roles at these orgs tend to be somewhat boring and more like business analytics than true programming or research, but they pay decently well and are fairly stable. Not really sure if Europe will be better off than the US during a second Trump presidency but there are definitely some cool PhD programs over there that I've considered. Hope your application process goes well!
True. However that money will have to come from somewhere, and there are very few states in the US that fund those efforts heavily. I could see Trump using a carrot or stick with federal funding to kill a lot of those.
Will see though. No idea what's going to happen other than it's going to be a rough few years no matter what.
And geospatial analytics/satellite data processing are hot right now in certain spaces.