Author Topic: Did you have a career change?  (Read 7025 times)

jinga nation

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Re: Did you have a career change?
« Reply #50 on: June 28, 2019, 07:18:11 AM »
first career: electromagnetics, design/test, lasted 4 years. great boss and team, terrible employer, not seeing growth or long-term prospects.
2nd: system design/integration/test engineering for IT systems, lasted 7.5 years
3rd: cloud engineering/developer, 1.5 years and going (was dabbling with this in 2nd career, got spotted and poached)

seeing where tech and jobs are going, connecting dots, getting the latest tech certs helps make the wallet fatter. having a BS and MSEE helped, makes me a better well-rounded engineer to understand projects from multiple facets, and got to be the lead on several projects.
having a side RE hustle made me understand costs, deliverables, timelines.

running to where the futbol will land.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2019, 09:11:50 PM by jinga nation »

2sk22

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Re: Did you have a career change?
« Reply #51 on: June 29, 2019, 03:26:42 AM »
There is a bit of a selection bias for many of the replies here in that you're going to get replies from people who have changed careers. My own career is a bit more straightforward: After I got my PhD in computer science, I have been either writing code or managing developers for 28 years.

But thats not the full story: even if you stay in one profession like me, you need to constantly re-invent yourself. Within computer science, I have switched fields several times. My PhD dissertation was in machine learning but I've also worked in distributed systems, mathematical logic, compilers and natural language processing. These transitions were not easy - its a never-ending struggle to stay relevant in a field like computing. I try to spend at least an hour a day studying new technologies.

Gerard

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Re: Did you have a career change?
« Reply #52 on: June 29, 2019, 11:31:35 AM »
sandwich maker (and other minimum wage jobs) in my early 20s
musician (full time!) in my late 20s
data entry, early 30s
student, 30s-40s
professor, 40s-50s
retiring at 60

Only the professor job paid enough to fund retirement. But my mustachian ways let me live well on the low-paying gigs, so it's been win all the way.

Some barriers to change discussed here were irrelevant to me, because the gigs where somebody else judged my past record didn't pay much anyway. I guess the trouble comes when you try to switch into a high-paying mainstream gig.