[friendlydog]

Microsoft isn't dead. Lot's of companies use it and are successful. It might not be a good fast first to market choice, or a good choice for building a quick prototype app, but sometimes you build a rope bridge before you build a wooden one. You can make money, be hired, and have a nice career using Microsoft as a back end. That being said I run from any project using blazor instead of react, angular or vue. Node, Java and dot net are great choices, if I was going to green field a new project I'd have a hard look at NextJs. As far as cloud goes you need to be familiar with at least one and willing to train on whichever the company you are hired for uses. Hiring a unicorn dev which matches a text stack is unlikely for every case, and I'd say a dev who doesn't know the stack, yet, but thinks like a dev is better than one who does but can't think like a dev.

I am pretty familiar with the North American US job market and have participated as an interviewer and interviewee.

After 40 expect discrimination in the job market, you shouldn't have to, but you will. Consider what makes your personal brand unique and play up your experience and current trajectory of upskilling.