I left engineering (non-CS) at 36 y/o to become a firefighter-paramedic. Long story short, took EMT-Basic at night for shits and giggles, realized I really liked it. Then went to paramedic school afterwards not knowing what I was going to do with it. Close to graduation from PM, county FD was hiring paramedic only and cross training to be FF as well. I figured if I didn't do it then I never would so I did. The best career decision I ever made. I stayed for 14 years before covid scared me away due to a chronic medical condition I have. I was married and we had just had our 1st child. (Still married, oldest graduated H.S. this year and our other is a sophomore in H.S.).
During the 14 years as a FF/PM, I felt I needed a backup plan in case I got hurt or my medical condition got to the point I had to leave (thought of this WAY before covid). I went back to school for a master's in CS, online. I was 40 y/o when I started school and completed at 45 y/o. After graduation I worked a few part time, remote jobs as a software developer.
Then in 2020 covid hit, I had enough, and started applying for CS jobs. Landed my 1st full time gig at 50 y/o. Stayed for 2 years and then, last year at 52 y/o I landed a new software dev position.
Never once, even the positions I interviewed for but did get the job, did I feel my age was a factor. It was never my plan to have a diverse and disjointed resume, it just happened. I did things I felt were in the best interest for my family and/or me, with an eye on the future.
I've got a 5-year plan to leave tech and go back to school to become a therapist, specifically working with people suffering from OCD (and perhaps some other forms of anxiety). At this point it's mostly meeting with people in the industry to hear their stories, with a goal of applying to master's programs in the next two years.
Most likely complete a 3 year program and then open up a private practice.
Demand for therapy in my area (Seattle) is at an all-time high, and there are often considerable wait lists when it gets specific like OCD.
Each has worked out better than the last and brought me more enjoyment (and dollar bills as well, ah gem). I still like my rocks, but I really like coding, too.
Now over 40 though. Hoping to stick with the software engineering side of things from here on out. But who knows!
Edit: In terms of advice - if you’re bored or lacking fulfillment in your current role and something else legitimately interests you, take the chance and do it.
It’s not always possible of course, I am very very fortunate in having a partner who is supportive and can help cover us financially while I attempted to ramp us in new careers.
But people with a strong enough desire seem to find a way. It just might take a bit longer.
I was tired of having to keep redoing the same thing whenever the product owner or designer changed their mind on something, and the tipping point came after they were looking for suggestions for this one visualization clients had a hard time understanding. No one liked my suggestion so we did one of the other ones, then a few months later it came up again as still too confusing and the designer came up with something new - that just so happened to be the same thing I had originally suggested. It's been that version ever since.
Switching to maintenance here meant that we're directly solving problems. Not just "thing is broken, fix it" but also creating simple for-purpose tools, refactoring and upgrading, and largely being able to plan our own work. It's been a great place to use the depth of knowledge built up over the years, though not so great for new devs to build that knowledge in the first place, like we typically would try and use the role for.
After that, pivot to IT security ... burn out. Then pivot to web development which emphatically burnt me in different ways (I'm kind of nonvisual, so visualizing things is my bane. see aphantasia which I found out about later). Last - embedded electronics software, where I'm much happier. Sadly out of work for the last year so let's see where next....
Advice? It took longer to get a job as an SWE than I had anticipated. I kind of stumbled into being a Unix sysadmin way back when and didn't give much thought into getting my first SWE job paying a real salary.
In hindsight I would have paid more attention to college internships (although I don't know what companies make of someone 30+ on an internship). I was enthusiastic about Android when it came out, and at this point I'm happy I focused on it, but if I had been studying Javascript and React instead of Java and Android I might have gotten a job sooner. Also, I was doing my own projects and did not think to work for some small company for low pay, but eventually I did - I made a little money, got a little experience and had something to put on my resume and talk about in interviews - and I was upfront with them that I was not planning to stay for many years (I wound up staying about a year and eight months, longer than I had anticipated).
So my advice would be to think about how you're going to get that first job on the career path, beyond the idea that you'll go to college (or training) and study hard. I went to college and studied hard, and even was doing a lot of my own projects as well, but in retrospect it took longer to get that first job with a decent salary than I had anticipated.
I worked for small startups for 2.5 years in order to gain relevant experiences.
The university job worked out in the end. I got tenure after a few years, and I had many more opportunities to learn and to interact with interesting people than if I had continued as a freelancer. I retired from the university earlier this year at the age of 65.
Looking back, I am glad I made that change when I did. But I still remember how nervous I was the day in September 2005 when I emailed my long-term translation clients and told them I couldn't accept work from them anymore.
I also wish I reached out to my network a bit more and talked to other SWEs prior to accepting my role. Not that I would have changed my decision, just could have leveraged friends to get a sense of the day-to-day.
I myself went from support > consulting > dev > cloud. None of those are a change in career! It is all still software!
Neither is going from a SWE in one industry to a SWE in another! That is just a new job!
Going from SWE to being a Firefighter or Police is a change in career.
Going from being an ER nurse to a SWE is a damn change in career!
It's been working out well due to me having doing something I enjoy more than doing something that makes me money.
What I regret is not getting here sooner.
Five more years after that and I make 10x what I did 10 years ago and am working towards FIRE. My family lives on <30% of my income, the rest goes to savings and investments. We should reach our FIRE number before I turn 50.
I love the work I do (DevOps with a Security focus), and that year off I took I was miserable. I'll probably never really retire, just be to the point where I can do the work I need to in under four hours per day and travel.
Started as a retail pharmacist, moved to become hospital pharmacist, a sidetrack to become a COBOL computer programmer in warehouse software, then back to retail pharmacy plus aviation training as far as Commercial Pilot Licence, then back to retail pharmacy when General Aviation went through a downturn, followed by becoming general manager of the family's Commercial Rents business.
In my youth it was common to see people stay in one job for all their working lives. Today it's common for people to have several careers over that time period.
All of my experience was mainframes and cobol anyway, and leaving that for a more modern SWE is a radical path change as well.
Anyway. Working as a SWE sucked all of the fun out of it. Now I get to enjoy it as a hobby again.
I know lots of others 30+ who switched to cs after 30 as well. Much less going the other way. It's worked out quite well for everyone I know.
I know thats not at 30... but close enough given the huge change in career trajectory.
But can't leave behind tech. Still writing code to automate things at work.