Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

In some ways I feel lucky that tech was an early career change for me. I was trying to get a career in the arts off the ground, and it was going poorly. I was a recent grad millennial in the economy of the 2008 recession.

The decision to turn my back on what I thought was my passion was a profound spiritual experience. The decision to change came from outside of me. The decision of what path to follow was up to me though.

Tech was hiring and hiring like crazy, and I wasn't going to do an unprofitable degree twice so CS it was. I had a job before I graduated making 4x what my mom was making at her non-profit admin job.

If I hadn't pursued my art career first and had the chance to get deeply disillusioned with it, I would definitely be sitting at my desk trying to write code and thinking "what if... I'm not made for this... there's something else..." The truth is that I'm not cut out for the arts industry. I like stability, I like being salaried, I like having the upper hand in the hiring market (I know Big Tech is doing layoffs, but try spamming applications for a year to everything you can think of until the only place that calls you back is a cashier position at a grocery store. I have skills that are in demand now.) I like work that is decent and stimulating enough but which is definitely not "my passion" because that helps me keep boundaries on it.

I feel for folks who didn't get that chance to try out that other thing, who went straight into this career maybe because they wanted to, maybe because they didn't have the safety net I had that allowed me to do a second degree, maybe because life has held them down and change doesn't feel like an option. I've been out there with my chosen field and gotten burned hard by it so I'm content to stay put. It's definitely one of the cliche sayings about how the lows make the highs much higher.

I have no useful advice for anybody beyond their very early 20s facing this question. I know I would be eaten by this question if I hadn't already gotten my answer at the start.

It's less a question about what changes, and more a question about how well you can recall your past experience (I had the big picture, but forgot the details of several optimizations I'd written in the past, as well as certain CS fundamentals), and how well you can do online coding interviews (I've only written Coq, at a glacial pace, over the last three years).

I will mainly be working on the middle-end and back-end for RISC-V.

I'm going to guess you have never worked a service job.

It sucks. People suck, you get yelled at, insulted, demeaned, shit pay, long hours.

Tech work is the cushiest job ever. It takes almost no effort to get into, you get paid insanely well, and skills are always in demand.

What is there to complain about?

I feel very fortunate I had a similar experience. When I was younger I joined the Army and after that did construction. I look back at those experiences and I realize how lucky I am to be able to work in Tech. Unfortunately a lot of people jump into tech at 22/23 fresh out of school. They work 10 years and start to become disillusioned that tech work is bad because they have nothing to contrast it to.

I'm on a hiatus from tech after nearly 20 years at a FAANG, I'm now an airline pilot.

The money sucks and the hours are long, but somehow the simplicity of the mission (go from A to B, don't bend any metal) appeals to me. Being able to switch the phone off after work, not having to worry about stupid office politics, planning, or performance reviews is quite liberating. The view from my office desk is unbeatable!

I'm sure this job will lose its lustre soon enough, and maybe I'll return to tech, but for now it's fun.