How do you come across your "niche"?
I’m on a networking team now. At first, I thought I liked it because the problems are tough and the barrier to entry is pretty high. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still learning a ton—but over time, I’ve realized I don’t actually enjoy diving into this stuff in my free time. If I’m being honest, the main reason I think I like it is just those three words: “networking seems cool.”
Recently, I started reading more about my company’s compute team, and that looks cool too! Orchestrating compute pods, scaling, reliability—it’s all super tempting, partly because it seems hard. For example, I tried poking around containerd and had no idea what was going on. But if you asked me whether I’d want to learn about it in my free time, I’d probably say, “I’m not sure.”
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How do I figure out if I want to learn something just because it seems cool at first, versus actually being passionate about it and wanting to stick with it? Maybe all of this is just my internal fear that I’ll either (1) fall behind, (2) be replaceable, or (3) pigeonhole myself into a field I don’t actually like.
I think the common denominator for me is that I like solving problems and making an impact. Whether it’s business problems, infra problems, productivity problems—I’m into it. But that doesn’t really narrow things down to any specific field.
Now I’m worried that I need to pick my “niche” soon, and honestly, I don’t know where to start. I’d really appreciate any advice! Thank you for your time :)
2. Are you good at networking? Are you growing in competence there? Can you actually fix things? Is the work not too horrible? Are the people reasonable, and not in too great a need of debugging? If so, think well before you leave it.
3. Niches aren't forever. I've spent all my career in embedded systems, except for a five-year detour in the middle into network security software. Niches, like jobs, often are only good until they're not; there's nothing wrong with riding them out as long as they're still good.