Got niche?

[d000hg]

Just wondered, who here has particularly niche skills which could be valuable given a chance to use them?

For me, the main one is Gensym G2. Nearly got me a £600/day gig on the mainland once when I got called out of the blue. Never seen anything since.

[Zippy]

The ability to walk upright and use simple tools. I live in hope that will land me a gig someday.

[NickFitz]

I keep hoping that one day I'll get The Call: "Hi, our client is looking for somebody who's implemented Forth on the 68000."

Ah well, back to implementing it on the iPhone...

[DS23]

yes thanks.

[Board Game Geek]

I've stayed away from niche for a reason.

Jobs are few and far between, competition is fierce and someone else will always get it anyway, you have to blimming travel to lawd-knows-where to do it, and being such a small sector, chances are everyone knows everyone else forcing you to have to grovel and schmooze your way around.

With an all-round general skillset in IT, covering not just PC's but Servers, AD, Networking, IP telephony, CCTV over IP, MS Office training, etc, I've not had any problems.

[minestrone]

I remember when java was a niche skill.

[TheFaQQer]

Yes.

Or rather, I had, until Oracle scrapped the product because they bought a "standards-based" replacement

[Tingles]

When I passed my ITIL exam in 2000 - it was a niche - now every buggers got it.....

[Sysman]

I've been in some niche areas at times. The trick is to not get dragged too far in and be prepared to move on. Make yourself "invaluable" and if you are not careful you can get stuck with a stale technology. It can be pretty boring too.

[OwlHoot]

Just wondered, who here has particularly niche skills which could be valuable given a chance to use them?

For me, the main one is Gensym G2. Nearly got me a £600/day gig on the mainland once when I got called out of the blue. Never seen anything since.

Must be a sod having to commute from the Isle of Wight.

Seriously, a problem with niche skills is that for most people they tend to be patchy and specialized even within that niche. But the snag is you need a complete set or else, as BGG (I think) pointed out, some other applicant will always come along and trump you with a broader skill set even if perhaps not as deep in your speciality.