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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3576 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How many of you have made major career changes? How long did it take you, or how did you go about it?

Quite the opposite. I was originally a CS major, planned to do SE, and bailed out in college after internships. I have a different career that I have little interest in but have been steadily moving up to the point of having a PhD related to what I do, all while trying half-heartedly for 10 years to get back into a technical space, even at one point having a start-up on the side. There was a time where I was involved at job with evaluating a commercial software tool, of which I had literally written my own (not enterprise ready though) only two years before. It was insult to injury knowing more about the inner workings than the Sales Engineer trying to sell it to me. AI + age + family, beat that plan out of me in the past year and I've only dug in deeper.

My career is one of those things that makes me most (insincerely) wonder about determinism and whatnot. It's such a sticky track for me that it almost feels like trying to pivot away is an unallowed path like in a video game.

Yeah, making a career pivot is difficult for me and I don’t have kids! I can’t imagine how hard it is with a family.

We really do get locked into our career paths so to speak, just like our brains our work seems to calcify over time.

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