Like a lot of people right now, I'm between jobs and struggling to land a new developer role. My career so far has been all in "tech companies" in/around Silicon Valley. I know there's lots of software development that happens outside of tech-focused companies, but I'm not sure how to access those roles.

Has anyone here transitioned between the tech industry and line-of-business or internal software at non-tech companies, in either direction? What was the transition like? What can I do as a candidate to make myself attractive to companies outside of Silicon Valley?

The most obvious difference to me is that industries like banking look for people with .NET experience, which I really don't have. I'm happy to sit down and teach myself C#, but my impression is that hiring managers in these fields only care about actual "work experience" and are unlikely to take portfolio projects seriously. Is my impression accurate?

And of course, if anyone is hiring a generalist with recent C++ experience, I'd love to talk!