The industry changes pretty quickly but I can't think of anything too significant that's changed in the past four years. Also once you've learned enough tech it's not too hard to pick up something new quickly.
I knew basically no React when I was hired at my current job, I only knew Angular, and while they hired me for a client that wanted Angular, that fell through and they put me on a React team and I picked it up well enough to contribute more than bug fixes after like, two weeks, and now 3 years later I'm waaaay more comfortable with React than I ever was with Angular.
Honestly, I'd be happy enough to write purely React code for the next 5 or 10 years, but I do find all of the extra skills required of a front-end developer to be completely mind numbing... Cloud deployments, build routines, databases, etc.
What skills/technologies do you think are mandatory to know in 2024?
When you're fresh back, you won't be competitive in most job interview test scenarios, for two reasons: one is that you often won't have the specific skills (or context) being tested (e.g. facing down a TypeScript coding interview instead of a JavaScript coding interview,) or, worse, you'll have skills in the _wrong_ packages, and in the design interview, these skills will incline you to make outmoded architectural choices (you'd solve a problem with Selenium instead of Playwright, for example.)
In my experience, you'll be dependent on people around you for guidance and context for at least a year.
That's the bad news. The _good_ news is that you'll bring to the table your original core skills and experience, which essentially vouch to an employer that you _will_, within a dozen months, be a non-regrettable hire. Turning the chessboard around, this means that they can essentially hire you at below-market rate, with a higher probability that their bet will pay off (in comparison to someone entering the industry fresh.) It also means that you'll be less likely to bounce to another employer, as you will (correctly) perceive your chances as worse-than-average, and you will (probably) have goodwill for the employer that gave you a hand back up.
In short, you will appear not only to have favourable 'burn' characteristics, but favourable 'churn' characteristics as well, and one or both of these facts, to the right employer, might put you at the front of the line. (Recalling that burn and churn are the two greatest foes faced by smaller tech companies.)
So, your loss becomes their gain, which, if communicated properly, becomes your gain again. Sort of.
This argument works best on companies that are _not_ hand-to-mouth first-hire startups (as they can't afford to wait a year on any bet, let alone provide the peers you'd need to re-up and re-orient your skillset,) and are also not large corporations (who are generally too big to respond to argumentation; a balleen whale does not argue with krill.)
Companies that have been around for a year or three and have between 10 and 100 employees, though, are prospects.
Finally, I can't overstate the importance of two other factors: personal network, and luck (luck being $RAND * $PERSONAL_NETWORK). This whole pitch works much, much better with someone who has some connection to you.
Good luck <3
That's a great analysis of how to position oneself in the recruitment process. Sounds like I'll be focusing on roles at mid-size companies going forward.
I appreciate the kind advice. Thank you.