| What is your field? (Because if you're a theoretical chemist trying to become an industrial chemist, the advice below is probably useless. But since you refer to "side projects and a portfolio", I'm going to assume for now that you must be some kind of programmer.) So: First, a tiny story: At the corresponding time in my own career, I turned in my thesis, turned down a couple of jobs in my old field, moved into my parents' spare room, and spent three or four months teaching myself web development from online materials and a handful of books. (SICP, Learning Emacs, Introduction to TCP/IP, SQL for Smarties… the usual suspects.) Then I got a job. (It was the peak of the 1990s bubble, a good time to get a programming job. But, then, today is also a good time to get a programming job.) The right way to save time on your academic workload is to stop doing academic work. Do you see yourself in academia in the long term? No. So why are you working on a postdoc? Who ordered you to get a postdoc? You did. Who is making you spend time and energy on that postdoc? You are. Write yourself a resignation letter, give yourself two weeks' notice, and quit. The right way to escape a niche is to leave. You don't need to expunge the niche from your permanent record or anything - it's nothing to be ashamed of, it deserves a nice spot on your resume and is good for years of future anecdotes and impromptu lectures. But if the niche doesn't get you paying work, it may be time to let it rest for a while. The right way to get any technical position is to demonstrate that you've done and enjoyed the kind of work that the position will ask you to do. If you want to build web sites, build a web site or two. If you want to build iOS applications, build an iOS application. These things will not be sexy to an academic audience. You have to deal with that. Don't worry about immersing yourself in the "larger pool". The reason there's a large pool of people doing X is: X is where the money is. And X is where the money is because, no matter how many people are doing X, there always seems to be more work to do than there are talented people to do it. Programming is in an expansionary phase, and there's a lot to be done. |