<story><title>Ask HN: Devs/data scis who pivoted to a new career in 30s/40s, what do you do?</title><text>I see posts every once in a while about engineers or data scientists choosing to leave the space to a new one.... I also often hear how hard it is to do so.&lt;p&gt;For those who made a successful transition, what did you move to? What advice do you have in hindsight?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>lr4444lr</author><text>As someone who has obligations to provide for a family in the USA, I can&amp;#x27;t imagine leaving dev work without an absolute clear passion and burning drive to do something specific. Giving up a six figure income I use to feed and house my family that demands I use my brain while sitting in a comfortable indoor environment, doing nothing more physically taxing than use a keyboard? Sure, I have fantasies from time to time about doing something with more dynamism in meatspace, but let&amp;#x27;s get real: it&amp;#x27;s a fantasy. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine recommending anyone with a stable career in data work upset that apple cart unless they already have a clear aim in mind, which they think about day and night - not with the unsureness of this post.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryandrake</author><text>I think some people must have some romantic view of manual labor, like it is more noble or pure than moving protobufs from one API layer to the other. Combine that with the very real problem of burnout and stress from an emotionally abusive work environment, and you have people thinking they want to quit and do farming or something. A lot of my peers in the office quite obviously (it&amp;#x27;s hard to hide) grew up quite well off and have no idea what it&amp;#x27;s like to work a mind-numbingly dull service job or how much daily manual labor wrecks your body.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had the pleasure (&amp;#x2F;s) of working retail, being a janitor at a McDonalds, working in a plastics factory that wrecked my sense of smell, and hauling shingles up onto a roof in 100F+ summer temperatures. I will take my sit-down, climate controlled, fingers typing job over any of them, any day, no matter how much those meetings and status updates annoy me.&lt;p&gt;And, none of the above even touched on salary or standard of living...</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Devs/data scis who pivoted to a new career in 30s/40s, what do you do?</title><text>I see posts every once in a while about engineers or data scientists choosing to leave the space to a new one.... I also often hear how hard it is to do so.&lt;p&gt;For those who made a successful transition, what did you move to? What advice do you have in hindsight?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>lr4444lr</author><text>As someone who has obligations to provide for a family in the USA, I can&amp;#x27;t imagine leaving dev work without an absolute clear passion and burning drive to do something specific. Giving up a six figure income I use to feed and house my family that demands I use my brain while sitting in a comfortable indoor environment, doing nothing more physically taxing than use a keyboard? Sure, I have fantasies from time to time about doing something with more dynamism in meatspace, but let&amp;#x27;s get real: it&amp;#x27;s a fantasy. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine recommending anyone with a stable career in data work upset that apple cart unless they already have a clear aim in mind, which they think about day and night - not with the unsureness of this post.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nextworddev</author><text>Think you are overestimating stability in data work, especially going forward</text></comment>