Systems Programming as Marketable as Web Dev?

1

I’ve been working as a software engineer for about a year now and am starting to plan out the next few years of my career. I’m working on a network security product gaining experience with C, Python and Linux. On the side I’ve been playing around with different things and looking at web dev things, but I’m still in the phase of deciding my technical route.

I’m worried that systems programming positions open to international applicants aren’t as abundant as web dev positions. Does this seem right? Web dev interests me a lot but I feel that I would be under-qualified compared to full-time web devs simply because I can’t devote as much time to gaining skills relevant in the area.

Another thing I’m a bit worried about is that the code I write is completely proprietary, so my Github activity won’t really show my complete story. Does this sound like an issue?

2

I think there are probably more visible opportunities for web developers, but there are probably more people applying for those jobs as well, so I’m not sure transitioning would change much.

99% of developers have nothing of note on their Github profile. So lack of activity isn’t a negative sign to me. However, the better you can publicly demonstrate your abilities as a developer, the more opportunities you’ll have. This article has a couple of ideas of how you can do this.