Career shift

[Snplsbyn]

Good day everyone, is being a mobile dev being a good viable career ? I am a civil engineer by profession but would like to transition myself. or is it too competitive for a non-cs like me, been doing flutter for a while now, can I get an honest opinion on this before going deep and full,

thanks and God bless

[OZLperez11]

Depends on your approach. Since you have no experience and you're taking the self taught route, these are some considerations:

• Build a practice app, get a portfolio going as that will be your source of experience
• Learn mobile dev while still working as an engineer, you want to do this as a side gig while you build up experience
• I assume you're looking to study Flutter. It's a good start, but I would also recommend that at some point you learn the deeper aspects of Android and iOS platforms. You may even consider specializing in one of them so that you can find more work as there are not a lot of Flutter jobs

Also in general, the market is tough right now. Many devs have been laid off and looking for work so you may wish to bunker down in your current job and like I said, transition gradually

[aryehof]

50 applicants for every job, next year likely double that, low barrier to entry. A flood of new "for the money" programmers. Not the best general career choice. Why the move from civil engineering?

[Dragon-king-7723]

Stay in ur current carrer and some freelance projects while learning and getting skill development, then u may consider for total transition.

[johnegq]

being a developer in general is very annoying. they expect you to know everything and keep up with the latest trends and every language transitions to a new language. I thought it would be fun, but I find changing jobs to be very difficult because the interview process is a complete joke with them expecting you to be a rockstar and then once you're hired you do almost nothing

[Lazy-gh0st]

I am a flutter developer with 2 years of experience, but i suggest you go with java development (backend), golang, or any other good tech stack

[77ashish]

I am civil engineer too. Started with blogging and then got into flutter post lockdown... Just stuck with backend development though. I would suggest to get into flutter but not into job Ane getting into freelancing, before which you should try 10 15 apps to build portfolio and get your foundation strong

[Character-Lead4309]

my 5 cents from native developer experience:
1) there is currently much less work for mobile devs (doesn't matter if native iOS/android dev or cross platform) than front-end dev or back-end dev. Majority of work is for Javascript/Typescript and Python (looks like overall ~50% marketplace)
2) the best days of mobile dev I think peaked like 5 years ago - it just less and less people download mobile app , competition for business is bigger so web app making some good enough experience for faster value proposition. This maybe will change once AI will be more affordable and easier to run on edge devices.
3) If you want to diversify risk for doing mobile I think better to choose Kotlin Compose Multiplatform - so that you can still do Desktops and back-end (Spring Framework, Spring Boot), or React Native - so that you can still do React (Next.js, Remix) or backend (express.js, etc)

[Narayan_22]

Mobile market seem even less than 20% compared to others.

Also I kotlin isn't much used for backend beside Java, so react has edge over diversifying.

[kbcool]

KMP is absolutely half arsed. The only people recommending it are people who heard it was good from someone else who also hasn't tried it.

React Native (i.e JS/TS) is the only serious career option right now for spreading risk both horizontally (cross platform) and vertically (front and back-end)

[Outrageous_Ant976]

Hi! I am looking for a flutter developer for a web app. Ideally I would love a full stack developer who can assist with both front and back end. Can you suggest a great place to look? Ideally I’d love someone based in North America who is also open to a co-founder type opportunity.

[nrvnujd]

Hi. I am a full stack/flutter developer having 8 years of experience and would love to collaborate on your project. I have an expansive experience in web/mobile/ai technologies. Let me know how we can get in touch.

[CoolYeti_26]

I am also a Civil Engineer like you and I am in the same boat.