Senior software engineer with 10+ years experience quitting job. What next?

[Boolean Games]

I don't think Virtual Reality will be the new gold rush, because it's pretty much only limited to games and entertainment industries.

The most profitable right now and in the near future in my opinion are: mobile apps, cloud software, SAAS and perhaps IA ranging from personal assistants to cars.

I am in the web industry because it's one of best and most profitable for a single-man. Read about the best performant SAAS startups so you can get an idea of what you can do and what people is buying. If you don't like the web then go with mobile app development. iOS that is, because I believe android's Play Store is like half less performant than iOS, unless of course, you want to develop and maintain two different platforms.

I'm doing iOS and Android apps right now(games to be specific), and to be honest, getting downloads is a real pain now due to over 2M apps in the App Store. It was a cake walk 2 years back, and now it's just getting more and more difficult unless you have a marketing budget. ASO just doesn't cut it anymore.

Even high quality apps/games don't cut it anymore. I know tons of game developers who spend months making pretty incredible games to only get 300 downloads at launch... Guys like us are more and more dependent on huge marketing budgets, and even then there's no guarantee of downloads.

VR/AR just seem like that "new industry", similar to how the iPhone was when it first came out. VR games seem to really be getting serious attention.
A lot of tech blogs and the "app gurus" like Chad Mureta are showing it won't just be a fad or a trend, but I'm not sure what to make of that since I'm not sure what their agenda really is.

So far I've just been thinking of getting into developing something or VR over Unity, but I'd rather get into it if there really is a future for it, what's your take
on all this?

 

[terrycody]

Chinese users name, cool.

 

[Antarktical]

I am former videochat owner. Understand how the adult webcam industry operates. Im known to some local studios. I have always wanted to automate some tasks performers must do manually. This is a very profitable niche. Maybe we can come up with something.

 

[rafark]

I'm doing iOS and Android apps right now(games to be specific), and to be honest, getting downloads is a real pain now due to over 2M apps in the App Store. It was a cake walk 2 years back, and now it's just getting more and more difficult unless you have a marketing budget. ASO just doesn't cut it anymore.

Even high quality apps/games don't cut it anymore. I know tons of game developers who spend months making pretty incredible games to only get 300 downloads at launch... Guys like us are more and more dependent on huge marketing budgets, and even then there's no guarantee of downloads.

VR/AR just seem like that "new industry", similar to how the iPhone was when it first came out. VR games seem to really be getting serious attention.
A lot of tech blogs and the "app gurus" like Chad Mureta are showing it won't just be a fad or a trend, but I'm not sure what to make of that since I'm not sure what their agenda really is.

So far I've just been thinking of getting into developing something or VR over Unity, but I'd rather get into it if there really is a future for it, what's your take
on all this?

I don't see Virtual Reality as a big market in the near future because of its hardware requirements and because it is for a niche specific industry. The success of smartphone apps is because everyone and their dog have a smartphone, from your mother to your neighbor, they all use and consume smartphone related products, and thus are all potential clients.

For example, it's more likely that your mom or wife would have played candy crush, doodle jump or any other all-public smartphone game at some point, but how many of these women would ever play a VR game? The market is smaller and will never rival that of the smartphone.

With this in mind, if you're not seeing the results you were expecting developing mobile apps and believe you can get more exposure/clients with VR games, then give it a try. Keep in mind though, that VR games are more complex to develop than a mobile app. At the end, you should have a balance betwen what you like and what gives you better ROI.

 

[Mnet17]

Hi, i'm also a software engineer who quit my job. I am a senior PHP developer with marketing background. I have connection with several top marketers. Do you want to team up?

 

[J.Random Hacker]

My skill set is enterprise Java and security with dev ops experience as a summary.

Wow - that is exactly my skillset too!
I'm going to move too Python because I always hated Java.
My idea is to dive into bot-creation, data science and machine learning - I see high industrial demands for this.

 

[nathanwebsolution]

you can make bot and sell it too, there is lots way to use bots

 

[Boolean Games]

I don't see Virtual Reality as a big market in the near future because of its hardware requirements and because it is for a niche specific industry. The success of smartphone apps is because everyone and their dog have a smartphone, from your mother to your neighbor, they all use and consume smartphone related products, and thus are all potential clients.

For example, it's more likely that your mom or wife would have played candy crush, doodle jump or any other all-public smartphone game at some point, but how many of these women would ever play a VR game? The market is smaller and will never rival that of the smartphone.

With this in mind, if you're not seeing the results you were expecting developing mobile apps and believe you can get more exposure/clients with VR games, then give it a try. Keep in mind though, that VR games are more complex to develop than a mobile app. At the end, you should have a balance betwen what you like and what gives you better ROI.

Some good points there actually, I do agree that I don't know how well VR would scale up or what the potential could actually be.

 

[LaoYin]

Thank you all for your feedback and research/advice. On the point of VR and AR, the market is slowly growing, but is not scaleable until the consumer will adapt the VR/AR set into their daily lives like our mobile phones. The VR/AR technology is great for indoor (for now) gaming and for entertainment purposes. So going into this field will be a good investment skill wise for the future. I will have a look at this.
Also if anybody knows any good starting point for programming in VR/AR environments let me know.

Secondly, after some research I can verify that the botting business is absolutely thriving and people are making crazy money from it. Whether its basic traffic providing to data mining etc the botting business is definitely lucrative if done right. So who ever is getting started or is deep in the botting business, keep at it.

Thirdly, the mobile app market is absolutely saturated, yet the most profitable. The main problem is that the big players retain their position in the play/app store ranking and front page which attracts most users to them. After intensive research, I can say that the mobile industry is also a thriving business that is on the level of botting profits, if not more, when done properly. What do I mean by properly? Well, lets just say that there are many game/app developers who have built amazing products and spent the last 6-8 months of their lives in isolation building this fantastic piece, yet they get no coverage for the app and it just ends up lingering at the bottom of the relevant search terms. The solution to this problem is to simple build a marketing strategy. Apps need allot of coverage to become succesfull nowadays, where as bots can start earning money straight away if programmed appropriately.

To conclude this post, I have decided to dive into the botting and app business. Lets see how I get from here. Thank you all for your posts. Hopefully you have found my post helpful.

 

[Papilloni]

I doubt VR/AR would be a good idea. I see no money in this business anytime soon. But I see a hell of a lot of people thinking there will be a gold rush and jumping in. So lots of saturation before there is even any demand at all. Doesn't sound like a good plan to me.

What you need for mobile development is a publisher. What you need for a publisher is lots of friends in the industry. So if you are serious about mobile business (especially games), make friends at publishers. Get into the IGDA, visit meetings, visit conferences, call people etc. Don't even try to make a game and send it to a Publisher you don't know anyone personally.

I've never looked into botting other than to make my own bots when I need one. Out of curiosity, where do you start to look into this? Is there some kind of marketplace for bots and requests for bots or anything like that?