Help me strategize my professional future

August 10, 2021 2:08 PM

I have been in a good and stable job for a bunch of years and think I may have outgrown it—but I'm not sure how to develop my skills into a coherent career path from here. What resources should I seek out?

Things I have done or do in my present gig:
- full-stack Wordpress (custom themes, custom taxonomy, plugin stuff)
- custom LAMP-stack database apps
- proofreading/copyediting/"library science"-ish metadata cataloging of huge amounts of niche technical content
- print design for books and academic journals
- some small bits of data science in R for research

Things I have NOT done:
- marketing/SEO/ad metrics (I work for a nonprofit that doesn't use the web to raise funds)
- UX/UI design
- Agile/Scrum team-based software project management things (I'm mostly solo)

I enjoy programming and would like to do more of it, but I don't know which direction(s) to look into to focus my search. Because my current job is very content-heavy, I've been looking at content-centric job postings, but they seem heavily weighted toward SEO and content marketing, and I wouldn't know where to begin. Also those terms seem vaguely sleazy to me, I dunno—I'm hesitant. I'm not in a big rush to get a new job so I'm open to taking classes or training in new languages or frameworks, I just don't know what.

posted by MetaFilter World Peace to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Seems like you could easily transition into data analysis. Database work, metadata stuff (and as such not opposed to meticulous data cleaning-type work), print design (not exactly the same but could easily take on data visualization concepts), copy editing (important for reporting) and... actual data science in R.
posted by thebots at 2:18 PM on August 10, 2021

If you don't personally enjoy trying to make things as efficient as possible and get the maximum reward for money spent I would probably avoid SEO. It does pay well though, and I hear from my friends that it is technically interesting.

I think a good metric to decide if you should apply for a full developer position vs a more content-focused role is if you feel comfortable with passing the relevant programming exam. I would look for some backend-focused programming exams and see how you feel about them. I haven't done backend programming in 5 years so I'm not sure what that would be specifically. Your skillset is definitely in demand, especially in small-medium companies where they don't have a fulltime DBA on staff and a huge development staff.
posted by JZig at 3:46 PM on August 10, 2021

I second thebots - my first thought was data analysis! Epis love R, and they are a better fit for your nonprofit background than going in the SEO direction. Also, for the first time in my life, public health has money to hire people and there's a dearth of folks with MPHs so we're hiring folks from adjacent fields (I'd consider library Metadata plus R to be public health informatics adjacent).
posted by esoteric things at 11:17 PM on August 10, 2021