Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

The 10 000 hour rule is bullshit.

But you're right that you can switch career and with enough practice (of the dedicated kind) you can indeed acquire proficiency in any skill.

You don't have to master anything to switch careers.

I switched careers from marketing to software development at 37 yo. It took me 8 months of full-time study (I had the privilege to be able to quit my job to do that) to get my first job as a front-end developer. Now, 5 years later, I think it was the best professional decision I have ever made in my life. I am much happier doing daily work than before and, now, I earn much more than I used to (despite a significant salary cut for my first dev job).

To put in hours, I would say 8 months averaging 7 hours of dedication on week days is about 1232 hours.

And I am no master, far from it. I am a competent, mediocre, regular 1x web developer. Some weeks I am 0.5x, some weeks I am 2x.

My opinion:

* The 10000 hour rule is nonsense. There are skills that require very much practice, and a lot of those are unattainable for most people. You could practice 10,000 hours on the violin or playing chess without reaching the lofty heights of Hahn or Magnusson. That does require some kind of "talent".

* Many other skills can be acquired in much less time, certainly if you don't start from scratch. E.g., learning a 2nd programming language takes much less time than the 1st.

* I've been switching jobs all my life; on average after about 5 years. 43 isn't very old to switch, IMO.

* Think about what is important to you: Money? Stability? Job satisfaction? Can you find a new job that gives you what you want and need?

If you're healthy and are willing to take the risk the answer is yes. Everything else is in your head. When I worked in China I talked to people who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and lost everything, then lost everything again during the turbulent years of the 80s and 90s, and rebuilt their life entirely again. They always used to say that when you're younger than 50 you can just start over and laughed at younger workers who were anxious in their 20s or 30s.

In many places people have started over four or five times, not once. And by the way you don't need 10k hours or be a master-anything to have a viable career in a field, just enough experience to get a foot in the door.

Malcolm Gladwell oversimplifies things. There's nothing magical about spending 10,000 hours practicing a skill, but you'll obviously get better at anything you spend a lot of time on.

To answer your question: it depends on your specific context. At 43, you could theoretically still gain the required qualifications for most careers and work for ~ 20 years (ex. you'd be 67/68 after 4 years spent earning a new degree + 20 years working). The more relevant consideration is will you actually be able to do that as a working 43-year-old with normal responsibilities?

Another question you seem to allude to is "will ageism be a limiting factor?" That answer is also context-dependent. At a lot of trendy companies mentioned here on HN, I'd suspect that it would be. That said, those companies are only a fraction of the job market and I'm not sure more "boring" companies would be as concerned with age as with your skills. Outside of tech and some competitive (+ conservative) industries like finance or consulting, I don't think it would be as big of a deal.