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

100%.

There are so many things that you can read or theorize about for years, in depth -- that end up still being very different once you actually do them. Just gotta try stuff.

My teens was my first jobs; pizza places and pamphlets. My twenties was travelling, hospitality and finance. My thirties was university, science and programming jobs. My forties has been a masters and now teaching, I wonder what my fifties will bring. Each change has let me take skills and experience from one sphere and apply it differently.

10k hours is not a guaranteed unless it’s directed practice. 2k and some flexible thinking can get you a long way towards interesting and new experiences.

I can't remember where I found the idea or if there is any scientific evidence behind it but I like it, increasing your rate of failure is the best way to learn something. If it took a computer 30 minutes to compile code, compared to a few seconds for a small program today, you could only run a program 8 times a day and debug your mistakes. So I would say, do not worry about time, but find a method of learning where failure is swift :)

You don't need to become a master to switch jobs. You just need to be able to learn new things. You weren't a master at your current career when you started it.

Assuming you will live to 86, you still have half your life ahead of you. But the longer you wait, the less time you have.

Just do it. You will regret not trying.

I wouldn't say switching career exactly. I'd worked with asset management software for utilities and telecoms a good twenty years, it used a propriatory language no one outside the industry recognised. I got made redundant from my company, and getting another job in the field would have required moving country. TBH, I was thoroughly bored of the field anywsy, and was starting to see my career ending as some aging beardy in a server room looking after a valuable database no one could upgrade anymore.

I switched to mobile dev, although still in a related field. Well, I didn't just start out that way, to keep myself occupied during redundancy, i developed some fun stuff I was doing on MacOS, someone liked it and wondered if they could do the same on their iPhone, so I worked out how to do that.

I put several years of time into it, it wasn't a very successful project for making money, but it gave me something to demonstrate when applying for mobile jobs at the age of 43, and eventually landed me a job.

I had plenty of related experience I suppose and soon started making an impression in my new line, now I work on an app I developed and proposed myself to the company. I feel happier I work with more modern languages, that I can come up with an app a company thought had enough potential to invest time and money in, and is slowly starting to get successful and has an impact in my industry.