[fringedgentian]

I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone. This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city, so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume.

After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it. Being unemployed, I luckily had a lot of free time. I made a study of the programming job ads in my target market and if I didn't know what a technology was, I looked it up. I tried to figure out which language was the most asked for, and decided it was PHP (at the time). Also in my studies and in the job ads I noticed that most of the work involved these new-fangled Content Management Systems and so decided I needed to learn one of those, and I chose Joomla. It was a choice I would later come to regret but it got me a job.

To learn these, for both PHP and Joomla I ordered a book from Amazon.com. I limited my search to books published in the last few years and ranked them by customer satisfaction and chose one near the top. And then I made myself go through reading these books and doing the exercises at the end of the chapters. This was very very boring but I made myself do it. Then I created a few Joomla websites for local small businesses for free.

And then, after 6 months of unemployment, I had made myself employable again. I saw a job ad that I was now now barely qualified for, applied, and was hired to maintain a legacy Joomla website. Was it a glam job? No, but it was somewhere to start. And the rest is history. I do think if I found myself unemployable again I could repeat the process and figure out what is being asked for these days and learn that.

I haven't done a study of it lately but I would guess almost any kind of expertise in a major JavaScript framework like Angular, Ember, or React/Flux might get you a remote job fairly easily, as there are very few experts in this and many companies seem to want it. Also most developers don't want to do front-end/JavaScript stuff like that so there is less competition. That's where I'd start looking anyway.

[monk_e_boy]

I chose to write a hugely boring open source product that no one in their right mind would bother with. Old tech, competing with a ton of other similar projects. I focused on the documentation, make it as simple as 'cut and paste this code to get it working' every time someone had a question, bam - a cut and paste example.

Did some serious SEO and soon was racking up a couple of thousand hits a week. This soon hits the million mark. That gets me interviews, even with people who don't want that old tech, they just see results.

I am currently doing a bit of Drupal for a client, there are a TON of half baked modules. Take some of them and make them work. Make them work with the backup module, the restore, the import.... then your CV is padded with a ton of neat stuff.

This is super common advice, the trick is to actually take it. Get all OCD about it and make it work.

[hardwaresofton]

If you're getting millions of hits per week, you might want to consider doing something to monetize the open source project...

[monk_e_boy]

No, sorry, not millions a week. It was a thousand or so a week. What I meant, is that those thousands add up to a more impressive number. The numbers have dropped off over the years.

[nordic_nomad]

That's what I was thinking. Find something 1 in 1000 would pay a dollar for and you're golden.

[acoard]

1,000,000 / 1,000 = $1,000. Hardly golden. Still, I take your point, with a million eyeballs you don't have to monetize much to make a pretty penny.

[georgerobinson]

> After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out to change it.

First, as 20 something I can't imagine how hard it must be to wake up with the realization that you no longer have a job. Second, I think you deserve some real credit for 1. identifying that you were unemployable and 2. fixing it.

However, the real trick is identifying when you're unemployable (or even starting to get close to it) before you're unemployed. This is a game - and one that you'll never really win. But like all games: you keep playing - you get better. The trouble lies in that this is a game in which you need to be ahead of the gamemaster (that is - current and future employers).

> I do think if I found myself unemployable again I could repeat...

I want to stop you right there. I think your objective from here out is to make sure you never find yourself unemployable again - rather than waiting and/or hoping it doesn't happen.

> almost any kind of expertise in a major JavaScript framework like Angular, Ember, or React/Flux might get you a remote job fairly easily

These are valuable skills and expertise to have - and they will land you a job - but don't let it make you a one tricky pony - as that's a fast-track ticket to unemployment. I think few of these front-end frameworks will be here for the long-haul.

If I were in your shoes (of course I'm not in your shoes - it's 100% your choice) I would take what you've developed so far and start to dive into the fundamentals and then get the expertise.

For example: get to know the architectures of these frameworks: analyze and criticize them, attempt to improve them if you can; learn design patterns and identify the anti-patterns (important !); learn your algorithms - as it is these features that make you a valuable professional in the long run. Not just another PHP/JavaScript/ColdFusion dev.

Then you can wade in deeper and build up deep full-stack expertise. You could think about:

"Oh how can I optimize view rendering in Angular?" "How can I solve head-of-line blocking when using web sockets?" "What is the optimal compression algorithm in order to serve JavaScript files for mobile devices?"

I can't imagine a huge number of people think about how to solve these challenges - but I would bet that a lot of people face them.

All the other stuff is just tools to enable you to apply your expertise easier and faster.

[s73v3r]

"I want to stop you right there. I think your objective from here out is to make sure you never find yourself unemployable again - rather than waiting and/or hoping it doesn't happen."

I think that's kinda like saying, "I want to stop you right there. Instead of buying auto insurance, your objective should be to not get into a car accident again." It's a nice goal, but you're gonna need a backup plan for if something goes wrong.

[gavia1]

I see your point, and point taken!

I should rephrase my original sentence. When I said what I said I didn't mean that fringedgentian could guarantee he/she would never be unemployed - but that these steps would minimize his/her risk from finding themselves back in unemployment.

To continue your analogy, you cannot guarantee that someone will never have an accident, but you can recommend precautions to minimize their risk. It is these precautions that I was trying to hint at in my prior post.

[buckbova]

I was in a similar position with classic ASP/Coldfusion and VB6.

What I did was rewrite my resume to target the things I did like build reporting engines and dynamic web pages. I mentioned more of my impact on my job and accomplishments over what technologies I knew.

I highlighted more general skills like SQL programming and downplayed other language specific references like VB5/6.

I landed a job no problem. I spent the week leading up to the job studying up on the tech they used and was ready enough.

[studentrob]

This is a great story. Perhaps OP will see it and get motivated