Lost my job over 2 months ago. Haven’t found a new job yet. Parent of 2 (one newborn). Wife works, but doesn’t make much. I’m in my late 30s. Wife in early 30s. I’ve been working for the past few years as an SRE. Truth be told - I don’t like it much. And I was unlucky to work at companies and teams where the role was ops heavy, and mostly on-prem. So… I have a few options in front of me: 1. Interview for SRE or DevOps roles, fudging and/or adding cloud experience along the way. Hope something works out 2. Pivot to traditional SWE, apply for SWE roles hoping I land an interview, and prep accordingly. 3. Make a drastic change and pivot to MLE. Do a degree/projects/bootcamp 4. Leave tech entirely: a. Do a full time MBA and pivot to consulting or finance b. Make a radical switch to medicine or dentistry. This could take anywhere between 7-10 years. I have money, and willing to finance, to pivot accordingly. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? #tech
Not too late to make a radical switch to medicine, a friend did that at age 36, graduated from med school at 40, made barely $100k during residency yet just started making 600k at age 45. And guess what, he will be making that much for much longer than he could in tech (ageism in tech is reverse-ageism in medicine) also the fullfillment of "being a doctor"/saving lifes aspect is something you can never have in tech.
Nice. Did he have kids when he was 36? The other problem is - I’d need to do the premed requirements, which would take 2-3 years minimum. That would push my earning years to a later time. Also - I wonder how much debt your friend has incurred. But the benefits of medicine are hard to deny - always in demand, can’t outsource, can’t automate, high paying, no ageism.
It's pretty unlikely you'll be able to pivot to 3 where demand and competition are about as high as can be. 2 will take a lot of work, but with your somewhat relevant experience and a lot of prep could put you in a better situation. One advantage of ops-heavy roles is that there's less competition for them but stable need, so you should consider carefully what risk/ extra work you're willing to take on to pivot out. I personally would suggest #2 if you're determined to transition out, but don't expect you'll love that work either.
How easy would it be to transition back to SWE? I was a backend SWE before pivoting to DevOps and SRE. By title, I’m a senior SRE. But I’d be happy to consider mid-level SWE roles. But most openings for SWE are senior or higher.
Option 4b sounds crazy. You should do what makes sense for you and your family.