About career moves. Part 1. This is not how to do it

At the turn of decades, when EdTech in the country was aggressively growing, we were sold the idea that anyone can go and become a junior in IT. Then it became clear that yes you can, but it will be long, painful and quite difficult [because the entry-level market has been heavily skewed in recent years - demand is tens of times less than supply]. This doesn’t take away the opportunity to start, but there are transition scenarios that are almost-never-good.

For example, regularly at my career consultations there’s a dialogue with mature, experienced and cool specialists [40-55 years old], who have this clearly imposed - “well, I thought here, maybe go study and become a junior analyst/developer/tester”. And they came with a request for career strategy further.

So here’s the thing. In 100 out of 100 cases I’ve seen, the move to become a conditional junior front-end developer is bad for their career tracking. First, because in this market you’ll have to compete with yesterday’s graduates of physics and technology, and not with your strong side. Second, because your strong sides [soft skills, experience, awareness] will have to be pushed aside and left to gather dust - they’re not needed here, and that’s offensive. Well, and for whom is all this? Especially since you can always build a more elegant tracking, because desires and needs always lie deeper than “become a junior front-end developer”.