[hemling]

How do I go from general software developer to domain specialist if I don't have domain knowledge in the first place (or want to get out of the domain I'm working in)?

I suspect that people who are in a great niche got there by accident and that luck is a much bigger part than most want to admit.

I don't think a deliberate attempt to move into a great position will work.

[pdimitar]

To answer your first question: you simply sacrifice your free time to do it. No magic bullets sadly. Or, if your day job is very boring, get a fixed slice of your workday and utilize it for your future prospects / education. So many people do it and yet it's a largely denied phenomena. One of the so-called "public secrets". :)

A deliberate attempt to move into a higher position is just an intention and nothing else. The real hard part is changing the way you think and view yourself. You can start with reminiscing all the times in your career when you had a much bigger advice to offer outside of the usual coding monkey trope: "this feature will be done in 2 days". In this regard I believe the author hits the nail on the head: it's all about how people view you. If they view you as a coding monkey then they will not listen.

Start thinking about the advice you have given and which was ignored.

The process of self-transformation can take anywhere from several weeks to decades (and many people never achieve it). It seriously depends on the person. I am currently in that hard transition and I have to tell you -- it's exhausting and it will challenge a ton of preconceptions you didn't even know you had just a week ago. Be prepared to put anything and everything in your life philosophy in question. It's more than most human egos can endure.

I am still a programmer, damn good one at that. But I regularly get rejected based on "cultural fits" or half-arsed excuses where they have no idea how to twist the fact that they don't want somebody with my rates or my resistance to BS. And I started having other people market me as not-only-a-programmer. I am in no-man's-land right now but I can feel the attitude of several people changing -- and see a few new ones coming with a drastically different one compared to what I am used to when people hear I am a programmer.

TL;DR: It's extremely hard and the main limitation and hurdle is you. Sucks to admit but it's better for one fo be a realist. Remember the amazing "Cloud Atlas" movie:

"All rules are conventions and are meant to be transcended. One can only transcend a convention if they first imagine of doing so."

---

And yes, luck plays a huge part to it. But in one of the towns in my country people love saying "luck doesn't come to you, you go to it" -- which illustrates that if you keep trying eventually you will bump into the right people and conditions.

[datavirtue]

You can't slice out a portion of your day to learn niche domain knowledge. You get it by working in the industry or studying under a professor from the industry. You can't learn the payments industry from a bookfir example. All the information is tacit and passed verbally. Arcane is a good word.

[pdimitar]

Oh I agree what you say is true for many areas. But what I say is also true for others. It depends on what the person is aiming at.

My general point was that there are no magic bullets. I was always to irritated at the Hollywood trope of the person who hates their job and decides to change their life... and then we fast-forward to them having a villa at the sea and working only when they want. I was trying to show that a lot of hard work is involved, and that some sacrifices have to be made.