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Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

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Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#51

Post by codegeek »

tsingy wrote: post #40
codegeek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know you and don't mean to insult but I advise you to change your mentality. Victimhood is a choice. Yes, you live in a 3rd world country where things are harder. But SE is one of the only fields where you don't need a degree, could work from anywhere in the world and still make decent money especially depending on the cost of living in your country. Plenty of poeple live in 3rd world countries and have found…

You don't mean to, but you actually do. Come off your high horse and stop assuming things you don't know. Please do not misinterpret what I wrote, I think it's clear enough.

Fair enough. My point didn't come across the way I intended. All the best.

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#52

Post by fm2606 »

Twice!

I left engineering (non-CS) at 36 y/o to become a firefighter-paramedic. Long story short, took EMT-Basic at night for shits and giggles, realized I really liked it. Then went to paramedic school afterwards not knowing what I was going to do with it. Close to graduation from PM, county FD was hiring paramedic only and cross training to be FF as well. I figured if I didn't do it then I never would so I did. The best career decision I ever made. I stayed for 14 years before covid scared me away due to a chronic medical condition I have. I was married and we had just had our 1st child. (Still married, oldest graduated H.S. this year and our other is a sophomore in H.S.).

During the 14 years as a FF/PM, I felt I needed a backup plan in case I got hurt or my medical condition got to the point I had to leave (thought of this WAY before covid). I went back to school for a master's in CS, online. I was 40 y/o when I started school and completed at 45 y/o. After graduation I worked a few part time, remote jobs as a software developer.

Then in 2020 covid hit, I had enough, and started applying for CS jobs. Landed my 1st full time gig at 50 y/o. Stayed for 2 years and then, last year at 52 y/o I landed a new software dev position.

Never once, even the positions I interviewed for but did get the job, did I feel my age was a factor. It was never my plan to have a diverse and disjointed resume, it just happened. I did things I felt were in the best interest for my family and/or me, with an eye on the future.

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#54

Post by howcanyounod »

tsingy wrote: post #43
vitno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being condescending is also a choice. Nothing about the GP indicated victimhood, only striving for a better life with real challenges in front of them.

No worries about my life, I'm good. Just wanting to do something different as a job. Thanks for defending me :)

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#55

Post by fm2606 »

pneumatic1 wrote: post #46

I was 29 when I got my first job writing code. Before that I was a wildland firefighter and then a carpenter. I taught myself to code at night over the course of 2 years. Got an MS in Data Science a few years after that. Now I’m doing software engineering, data engineering, and data science in a domain I’m super interested in. So it worked out really well. I’m pretty much right where I wanted to be when I wrote my fi…

Oof, wildland ff. I've done a bit of that but on the flat ground in FL. I couldn't imagine doing that in the back country with hills and mountains. My old FD has sent strike teams out west, which is another thing I can't imagine - riding in a fire truck from FL to Colorado or California, and back.

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#56

Post by sharkweek »

hellotheretoday wrote: post #30
sharkweek wrote: post #4

Planning on it and I'm almost 40. I'm in tech now, but in life I really enjoy deep 1-1 time with people more than anything else I do at work. I've got a 5-year plan to leave tech and go back to school to become a therapist, specifically working with people suffering from OCD (and perhaps some other forms of anxiety). At this point it's mostly meeting with people in the industry to hear their stories, with a goal of a…

Ha we can trade. I’ve been a private practice therapist for years, am almost 40, and am pivoting into tech. I did CS stuff a lot in high school and early college and find myself missing it a lot. Been doing a lot of hobby projects over the past few years and have even done some contract work. Might even do some school because I would like to converge all my interests at some point instead of just doing code monkey jo…

Hah, that's awesome.

Okay a few things to toss out for your thoughts:

1) I'm sure there are lots of "idealistic" views I have about being a therapist, but I'm also realistic. There are going to be "harder" clients, I'm sure dealing with insurance / chasing payments / etc isn't fun, but in what other ways might one be too idealistic about thinking of therapy as a career?

2) Any specifics as to why you're looking to move?

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#57

Post by RajT88 »

A lot of people here seem to miss the point.

I myself went from support > consulting > dev > cloud. None of those are a change in career! It is all still software!

Neither is going from a SWE in one industry to a SWE in another! That is just a new job!

Going from SWE to being a Firefighter or Police is a change in career.

Going from being an ER nurse to a SWE is a damn change in career!

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#58

Post by williamstein »

I was a tenured mathematics professor in academia (at UCSD and Univ of Washington) from 2005-2019, and a full professor during the last few years. At 45, I left academia and started a small tech company, giving up tenure and the academic life. It has worked out for me so far, though it often felt like my instincts from academia are almost exactly backwards from the correct instincts for industry. Anyway, leaving the "golden handcuffs" of tenure was probably a somewhat unusual part for me. I tried very hard to stay X% with the university, but the intellectual property and other rules were too rigid to make that work for more than 2-3 years, even though the mathematics department was extremely supportive. My motivation for leaving academia was my inability to get funding to support development of open source software (in particular, SageMath), and I still aspire to one day create more value and have a bigger impact than I could in academia.

Re: Ask HN: Did you change career paths after 30?

#59

Post by spieswl »

Yep. Went from electrical designer in industrial automation from 23-27, went to graduate school, came out as a robotics software engineer from 29-onwards. Almost completely different worlds. About the only thing that was the same was the presence of 6-DoF robot arms.
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