Ask HN: Switching Tracks?
I've been doing Java and Javascript development for about seven years now, and I feel like my learning curve is starting to flatten out. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science, but life and a couple of other circumstances tied me to an enterprise job that has started to tail off in terms of technical challenges. When I've submitted my resume, it seems to be seized upon either by people who want a J2EE programmer (my Java experience) or a web developer (my Javascript and AJAX work) and frankly, there isn't much that interests me in either of those fields beyond a paycheck. When I was in grad school, I did a hell of a lot of coding in C++ on interesting problems (e.g. genetic algorithms, a database driver) just for my own sake, and I've even done some minor contract work that allowed me to use Python, but that gets pushed aside as "irrelevant" when I try to highlight it in an interview or cover letter.
What I'd like to do is to get a job doing something that's technically challenging. As I see it, that challenge could either come from new tools (e.g. a new language) or a new task. However, the problem is that as I've accumulated experience, people increasingly see me as a specialist in the Java code I've been writing, and my extracurricular and general qualifications seem to be discarded.
I'm curious how people have handled these sorts of switches before. Anyone have any stories or advice?