| I am not a programmer, but had to make a conscious switch to cloud/kubernetes in the last 3 years. FWIW - 1. Will your kind of work remain so in the next 10 years? It means technology (ex. Oracle). You should strive to move into a domain that stays relevant for next 10 years. 2. Are there areas that you can expand into? Given your condition (family and kid), you do not have the luxury of a fresh grad. Put it other way, how many guys (say 40+) do you see working in your type of role? And what adjacent areas do you see people growing into? For example, move from coding to product management or business development or solution architect? I am biased to this path. 3. Did you work on virtualization, linux or any platform? Kubernetes is a platform. Do you want to switch to kubernetes platform, or build applications on kubernetes? Time is essence. Unless you have prior knowledge of Linux platform, virtualization etc. it will be a long learning curve. In contract, app development is a different skill altogether (micro services patterns). If you pick app dev, Golang is the way to go if you have to pick a new language. 4. Do you deal with data a lot? If so, how about Python and data science, and then figure out how to use various data analysis tools on kubernetes. Again, this has to be an interim step for you to move into something that interests you. 5. Switching to a new role/project in your current company is better than looking one outside. |