Hi,
I have been in industry for close to 17 years, and I started out as a Java developer. Moved on to JS and a bit of UI development, and some inhouse tech that my company has. Have been in same company for long, and havent had much of a opportunity to go beyond some legacy tech. Now I am a bit lost with what to upskill for. I haven’t even worked on cloud tech, though I did a course on it. I am unable to decide what to upskill now - Java, cloud, AI/ML? I have been a bit lost with my career direction last 2 years, and would really appreciate any advice on how to move ahead. I am feeling really lost and worried.
Welcome to the forum!
Consider to combine coding and cloud as a cloud DevOps engineer. I’m a cloud consultant/architect and this role is in high demand from my daily working experience. You can attain your cloud certifications (Some associate degree and then DevOps Expert plus Terraform or Kubernetes) while working in your current job.
Thanks to your long experience you could land a DevOps role fairly quick, since DevOps is for experienced folks. Go multi-cloud (AWS & Azure), most companies follow this strategy.
Best of luck
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Did you cross 40+ already like me ?? 
I agree things are different in this age group professional, as you need to manage professional and personal commitments as well ( lots of them )
I would suggest have a plan till the age of 50 and think of doing something else to do rest of your life.
If you already have JS experiences, I would suggest learn latest frameworks and continue with it till 50. You can check top VC firms’ jobs page to see where new jobs are comings.
My favourite is Y Combinator jobs, there are plenty of jobs for JS/TS skill set as well.
IMO Java is obsolete as startups use lots of new tech for backend and only legacy projects has got Java.
All the very best
Yes, crossed 40 Thank you for the reply. Java has been having so much of upgrade last few years. I was actually thinking if I should do a certification for latest version… (i had done for java 6 eons ago). Do you think its not of much use for jobs now?
As I’ve suggested earlier, look into current available roles in Top VC website’s job page; you will get to know where are the investing and what kind of roles are those startup looking for.
Frankly Java is outdated tech, I don’t see many new roles compared to other tech now a days in startup world atleast.
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Irony is even in Android world, majority of the developers are using Kotlin and no Java any more.
Yesterday xAI had raised huge funding round and just now checked JD for backend engineer, Java is nowhere to be seen.
Do also check podcast on YT from @AarthiAndSriram, I got to know about it today and you will learn a lot from them, about what’s next in IT world, will surely help you a lot
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