A career ending mistake

Yeah, there are a ton of meeting for those roles as well (possibly more since they have firm hardware prep needs, usually official standards to get approval for, etc.). Reading through the requirements docs and planning years out for a product release being done by the electrical engineers on a new device, made me thankful software was so agile.

As unobjectionable as this advice is, it also doesn't feel terribly useful. Consider this quote:

> As software engineers, we already know that a too-rigid plan rarely survives contact with reality.

For me this is understating things quite a bit. As someone pretty much exactly mid-career who has done well, I can't really point to long-term planning as providing any value whatsoever. It certainly doesn't hurt to think about the long-term value of what you are doing now as an impetus for change, but thinking too much about specific destinations starts to veer into day dreaming territory.

Instead, what I've found useful is first and foremost to take risks and keep my options open. For instance, IC vs EM is not something about which I hold a strong opinion. When it comes time to change my role the best opportunity may not fit into a rigid taxonomy of "career goals" and there are more important factors.

All too often I see ambitious young people asking for a roadmap to success. This is especially true at higher tier companies and people that have come up through Stanford/MIT where they have been spent their whole life jumping through rigidly defined hoops. They come into the workforce with the idea if they just do what they're told hard enough they can get promoted on a regular cadence. However doing as you're told has a natural glass ceiling, and personal success has more to do with playing to your strengths and seizing opportunity than playing by the book.

Not OP but I would like to give my own version of it, if you don't mind.

I changed careers at 30. Before that, I was a "Mechatronics Technologist" which means basically that I worked on automated machinery. I loved that job and did it for 8 years, and I was pretty good too... and I was actually happy with the money... but in that area of work, when you're pretty good, you tend to stay right where you are for the rest of your life. My peers had been doing the same thing I was doing for 25 years. I just couldn't see myself doing that.

Mechatronics includes a little electricity/electronics, mechanics and a lot of software... and software was always my stronger point, so I decided to become a software engineer. I changed to the night shift and went to university during the day. It was extremely tough, but I was so glad anyway!! I just loved being in the university again, this time as the older guy rather than the clueless teenager. Took classes very seriously, learned a hell of a lot.

Left my job in the last year to start an aprenticeship (yep, they do have those for programmers, just look for it)... getting 1/4th of my old salary , but at this point I needed very little money anyway.

After graduation, I quickly got a high paying job and loved every moment of it... after a few years there was some challenges, like working in shit places with shit people, unfortunately, but after moving around a bit I settled at a small company that has really nice people and who absolutely respect me for what I know and the effort I put into learning and teaching others... they recently gave me the pay rise of my life, over 25% , after I had alreay settled at the usual 4% with my manager :D. Just because they wanted to make sure I won't leave (after 6 years at this company, almost any developer would be thinking about leaving, and they're not wrong, even if I am happy, we tend to want to expand our horizons every few years).

Anyway, I am really happy working with software, I work on my own software even on my spare time because I just can't stop :D and it's really fun for me. Now that I am getting quite a lot more than on my old career, I am really happy just where I am (and I am not in management or anything , but what makes me happy is that I basically don't report to anyone: they trust me a lot and let me do whatever I want, which is great). I am well aware that finding a job like this is not easy and it took me many years to get it... but I thought that if you needed inspiration, this story might help you. Good luck to anyone reading and just thinking of starting a career change now! It's worth it!

I went to university, went to grad school, got a PhD in a hard science, saw that science was a dead end career choice and tried to change career.

I have ended up in IT, although I have never written code for my role, or actually done anything technical for my job. It was immediately into the writing documents, architecting infrastructure and systems that I have no fucking clue about. At no point have I gained any experience about using or building anything, it's all bullshit designs and documents that I pull out of my ass so I can keep my job and not end up homeless ( I make under 40k being a non american). I spend my evenings desperately studying things that I HATE so I can at least have some grasp of what the hell they are before I have to design some complex system using different pieces of tech BUT AT NO POINT HAVE I USED THE TECH. I hate it so much and get rejected for any and all job applications to actually do something and solve problems that I apply for.

I sometimes wish I had never gone into IT, never gone to uni, and just carried on with the unskilled manual labouring job I had on weekends before uni. At least I would be doing something.

I hate IT and I hate tech. If I could do this for a few years and have the fuck you money of a few hundred k in the bank then I would put up with it, but that's not the case.

Yeah, c'mon. GP, it took 5 seconds to confirm the definition of the word. If you're going to be cynical at least be correct.