I strongly disagree with one small bit of this: "Hit the job boards and see what the largest technology need is and get to work learning it."
This is optimizing for finding jobs available via job boards. These jobs generally disproportionately suck, in the way that applicants from job boards also disproportionately suck. Do not willingly sign up to be either participant in two blind geriatric elephants attempting to tango.
Instead, survey the hiring market which is actually decent to be in, where decisionmakers hire people directly. This does require talking to people, but only a little bit. "Why hello, CEO I just met at a networking event. Quick question: what can't you hire for right now?"
The answer you'll get to this question is going to sound a lot more like "devs who speak SEO" than "Enterprise Java monkey." I've been both. One is much, much better than the other in terms of material and non-material rewards to working.
HN ought to have a 10x upvote button that you can only hit once a month, and a way to separately track who gets them.
This would be my vote for the month.
This is optimizing for finding jobs available via job boards. These jobs generally disproportionately suck, in the way that applicants from job boards also disproportionately suck. Do not willingly sign up to be either participant in two blind geriatric elephants attempting to tango.
Instead, survey the hiring market which is actually decent to be in, where decisionmakers hire people directly. This does require talking to people, but only a little bit. "Why hello, CEO I just met at a networking event. Quick question: what can't you hire for right now?"
The answer you'll get to this question is going to sound a lot more like "devs who speak SEO" than "Enterprise Java monkey." I've been both. One is much, much better than the other in terms of material and non-material rewards to working.