
Ask HN: How does a displaced IT professional get started in the software world? - Random_Person
Short story: I&#x27;m losing my job of 8 years on June 30th. Every tech firm I&#x27;ve applied for says I don&#x27;t have relevant experience.<p>I&#x27;ve worked as an IT professional in my state schools for over 8 years now. In my job capacity, I&#x27;ve covered the gamut of IT related disciplines from desktop&#x2F;server&#x2F;network service and management, to software development&#x2F;deployment. In the last few years, I&#x27;ve transitioned to more of a web developer as service needs were identified and providers were few and far between. I like doing this work and I&#x27;d like to continue to grow... the problem is, I live in West Virginia with no immediate plans (family reasons) of leaving. Opportunity isn&#x27;t exactly within reach here.<p>So, I started looking at remote opportunities... and I&#x27;ve hit a wall. My jack-of-all trades resume isn&#x27;t fitting for this sort of work, so I need to start training towards a more refined skill set that is more sell-able. I don&#x27;t know where to start.<p>I currently work in PHP&#x2F;JS&#x2F;MySQL, I&#x27;m comfortable in Java&#x2F;C#, and have a passing knowledge of many other languages and frameworks. If you were going to start over, right now, what would you be learning?
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ForHackernews
I'd suggest aiming for a "devops" role, given your background managing
deployments and infrastructure. Study up on the AWS platform and
automation/orchestration tools like Chef or Ansible.

You can tell a plausible story about moving from managing real infrastructure
to managing virtualized cloud infrastructure.

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Random_Person
Awesome. Thanks for the info!

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bradknowles
You sound like the sort of guy that would certainly get an interview quickly
at the place where I am now, if not a quick job offer.

But that would be in downtown Austin, and remote could be tough.

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Random_Person
Austin is nice and I have friends there, but moving isn't in the cards right
now.

