I keep waffling about what domain of software dev I should focus on: web, data, games, who knows. It is like Sylvia Plath about the plum tree, but more nerdy and less personal. But I am thinking that “security dev” might be the perfect niche for me; I would love to learn to read assembly code, reverse engineer, etc. Don’t want to be too far from development, would love to develop skills that could hypothetically one day be used to protect the people’s movements from attacks.
Web is pretty ubiquitous nowadays so there’s need for that in pretty much any dev shop. Data analytics is also pretty big right now. Security is a pretty solid niche as well, a lot of overlap with web stuff there. I’d recommend staying away from games because the industry tends to be highly exploitative.
Security is a good one, since the need for it isn’t going away. It would also require some good generalist knowledge to be familiar with the varieties of exploits out there. Good luck!
I’m backend and have been thinking about switching towards security for exactly the same reason. Want to be able to do some work that matters and not just enrich billionaires.
That said there’s also an argument for learning enough web dev so you can quickly build apps that solve real problems for working people. What always think of as the definitive example of this is a text messaging app day laborers could use to check out what other day laborers said about bosses. (You texted a license plate number and got reviews back)
security is a good one, if you like reverse engineering stuff and want to make sure you do at least a little bit of writing code, you might also like something in the devops/site reliability/infrastructure realm. Often has a lot of overlap with security too
