> I changed careers at 40+ years old. I'm very happy that I did it.
Would you mind sharing a bit more about that? I.e. what did you do before, what are you doing now?
I ask because I'm looking for inspiration; my current job is comfortable and okayish but not leading anywhere. And I really dislike the company that I work for.
Not OP but I would like to give my own version of it, if you don't mind.
I changed careers at 30. Before that, I was a "Mechatronics Technologist" which means basically that I worked on automated machinery. I loved that job and did it for 8 years, and I was pretty good too... and I was actually happy with the money... but in that area of work, when you're pretty good, you tend to stay right where you are for the rest of your life. My peers had been doing the same thing I was doing for 25 years. I just couldn't see myself doing that.
Mechatronics includes a little electricity/electronics, mechanics and a lot of software... and software was always my stronger point, so I decided to become a software engineer. I changed to the night shift and went to university during the day. It was extremely tough, but I was so glad anyway!! I just loved being in the university again, this time as the older guy rather than the clueless teenager. Took classes very seriously, learned a hell of a lot.
Left my job in the last year to start an aprenticeship (yep, they do have those for programmers, just look for it)... getting 1/4th of my old salary , but at this point I needed very little money anyway.
After graduation, I quickly got a high paying job and loved every moment of it... after a few years there was some challenges, like working in shit places with shit people, unfortunately, but after moving around a bit I settled at a small company that has really nice people and who absolutely respect me for what I know and the effort I put into learning and teaching others... they recently gave me the pay rise of my life, over 25% , after I had alreay settled at the usual 4% with my manager :D. Just because they wanted to make sure I won't leave (after 6 years at this company, almost any developer would be thinking about leaving, and they're not wrong, even if I am happy, we tend to want to expand our horizons every few years).
Anyway, I am really happy working with software, I work on my own software even on my spare time because I just can't stop :D and it's really fun for me. Now that I am getting quite a lot more than on my old career, I am really happy just where I am (and I am not in management or anything , but what makes me happy is that I basically don't report to anyone: they trust me a lot and let me do whatever I want, which is great). I am well aware that finding a job like this is not easy and it took me many years to get it... but I thought that if you needed inspiration, this story might help you. Good luck to anyone reading and just thinking of starting a career change now! It's worth it!
I dropped out of college early as I just wasn't mature enough / ready for that kind of thing / + I suspect ADD made it kinda hard to manage.
I got lucky and fell into a job where I worked in tech support, for some high end networking equipment for mainframes, later for data center related equipment.
Good career, very good pay, but still tech support. I found I worked with engineering teams really well despite being not the most technically proficient person among the teams I worked in (good documentation and being honest with the engineering teams gets you pretty far with them...). So much so that that I eventually rethought my college experience where I wanted to learn to code but at that time classes were "here's a book on C ... now I'll read from the book at you".
After 20 or so years company I worked for was bought out (that's a whole series of stories) and by then I wasn't so sad to be in the group that was being laid off. I got lucky and got paid out better than most people in the US receive so I felt like I had a chance to make a change.
Honestly I suspect money / comfort in changing is really the biggest factor in serious career changes, for me the payout took care of that to some extent. IMO rando promotion to management is not a "SERIOUS" career change. The changes that involve "starting over" to some extent is where the big changes are.
I wanted to stay in technology but also "make things" not just fix things for customers / sales who couldn't be bothered to config something correctly / and so on. So again I thought of working with the engineering teams and decided to take a shot at coding.
I found web development was surprisingly accessible / tons of resources on the internet compared to my "read the book at you" college experience. I started learning on my own and eventually took a coding bootcamp (oh man that's another series of stories). In the bootcamp class I found that older me responded to classes completely differently than younger me. I was now ECSTATIC to have someone drop some knowledge on me every day, it was a completely different experience than college. I was honestly very sad when it ended I was enjoying it so much. I would have loved going back to college on a more formal track after the camp, but family, income, just don't allow for it.
After the bootcamp I got a job at a fairly small company and have been happily coding away for a number of years now / expanding my skills / doing new things. I get to make things all on my own, apps, services, try new things etc. It's great.
Would you mind sharing a bit more about that? I.e. what did you do before, what are you doing now?
I ask because I'm looking for inspiration; my current job is comfortable and okayish but not leading anywhere. And I really dislike the company that I work for.