It's so frustrating. I want to learn and advance, it was easy in college and while I was a junior resource but life complicates things. I work late hours and weekends now, it's very hard to learn new things when your job is so demanding. Two kids, household responsiblities make things even harder. I know that we should all should "Stay on top of your skills" but I just find it so darn hard (if not impossible)...
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If you can get the clearance and don't mind what you are doing, it can be a good gig. I took a "pre-clearance" test and was told I failed it. No reason was given and the offer was withdrawn. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Security clearance jobs have much less competition. They do pay less (although maybe not less than Oracle), but the WLB and stability is decent. (There are plenty of defense contractors that will sponsor you for a clearance and have you work on other projects until an interim or final clearance comes through.
It can be tricky. Sure, you can learn stuff on the side. I took some online Javascript classes. The language is simple enough and the framework is somewhat intuitive, but unless you actually write production code, all you really are is a neophyte who is "familiar" with it, And if you don't use it, you become rusty. Meanwhile, employers want a "black belt" or "guru" and will want you to complete a non trivial exercise that builds and runs in just 1 or 2 hours. If you're a neophyte, you'll need more time.
This is why so many people job hop so much. You get the job because you're an "X" black belt, but you take the job because you will learn "Y", become a Y black belt, and move on. Lather, rinse, repeat,
Perfect response @oax
Unfortunately, this is the reality of a career in tech, regardless of whether you have a family or not. Gone are the days when someone could get a college degree, a secure/stable job, a house with a white picket fence, all while never having to worry about staying relevant in the job market again. If you thought that was how this would all go down for you then you were terribly mistaken.
Re: training, there are different ways of approaching the problem, though none of them are "free". I used to come into the office at least an hour than my co-workers in order to work on my own pet learning projects every single day. As I improved with a new skill the time spent would often increase to evenings and weekends as I worked to write demos/prototypes/etc, as I was cementing these new skills.
Look for other ways too - maybe some new project in your team where your boss sanctions the fact that you are doing some new learning as part of what is required to get the project done, etc... Lots of online training out there too for various cloud and dev tech. You need to incorporate this kind of mindset into your every-day thinking and the potential for new learning opportunities really goes on and on and on.
In 30+ years in tech, after the pain of a layoff early in my career, I'd estimate that the extra time I put in was at least enough to get a couple of additional advanced degrees above and beyond the MS that I already had. Probably thousands of hours overall. And I had a family, kept my marriage in tact, etc... Was a tough road though and that reality cannot be sugar-coated.