I know at least two people who are having to face a radical career change (as opposed to a mere job change and/or relocation) because job opportunities in their particular technical specialties (e.g. analog video production for broadcast) have dried up remarkably.

Wouldn't moving to digital video production would be easier? That's what the analog video people I know did (admittedly they started doing it ten years ago :-)

What's the consensus out there as to the feasibility of migrating from a technically oriented but deprecated field of endeavor to one involving Perl at some level? Would this mean starting over from an educational perspective, as in "yes, you have a degree but it's the wrong degree"?

First I would not orient your career around Perl. Aim to become a programmer - not a Perl programmer. You'll end up being a lot more employable.

From the education perspective an engineering degree (that doesn't include programming) is not going to get you a programming job. Especially since there is a distressing tendency to age discrimination in the tech industry.

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that going off and doing a CS degree of some sort would be the best way. Doing some vocational courses and getting some actual experience might well be a more effective route. Dig into some open source projects, do some volunteer work, etc. Experience sells as well, or even better than, CS degrees for many people.

In reply to Re: Suggestions for radical career change? by adrianh
in thread Suggestions for radical career change? by bigmacbear

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