I expect there are many careers that are similar. In some ways, your experience doesn't matter. A civil engineer with 40 years of experience building houses, malls, or parking garages is still a rookie if they're building their first bridge, right? Many concepts still apply, maybe even most, but it's still going to be new and difficult. I have over 30 years experience as a software developer but I wouldn't want to program for medical equipment or dive into complex low-level architecture that I haven't thought about since college.
I find when you’re in something everyday, it just is what it is. Yes, medial equipment is mission critical and has to work, but unless it is a brand new start up, someone is probably going to walk into a place that has system in place that take that into account.
When I started out I was in a command center for stuff that was pretty mission critical. It became pretty normal. I once walked down the hall and overheard someone say they had to log into production yesterday and they were terrified, as they hadn’t done it in years. Meanwhile, I hardly thought twice about it, as I was dealing with production systems all day every day… logging into hundreds of systems some days. I wasn’t careless, but also wasn’t terrified.
