Under: Career, Programmers/By: Will Veic

Who said you do survive? Take a look around and notice how many old programmers you see? Probably not very many.

This should tell you something obvious – very few programmers survive this industry. So even though this career is very profitable, it has a very short expiration date. And any programmer not planning this in advance will face problems.

I know it the best because I was in a situation where I had to change career from software engineer to something completely new.

Golden Handcuffs

You may be in a situation where you invested so much in this career and you don’t really know how to do anything else (at least not at this level).

You might even hate your entire career and you know that changing jobs will do nothing to improve the situation.

In fact, you might even feel your entire body, mind, and soul is tired from this software development and you’re desperately looking for a way out.

But on the other hand there is a lot of uncertainty.

Misery vs. Death?

What more can you lose?

If you already feel half-dead inside…

…what more can you lose?

Personally, I reached a point in my development career where I was ready to face any consequences, any hardship – as long as I didn’t have to code anymore.

And when I finally changed my career I realized I should have done it much earlier.

I realized that there was nothing to fear after all. Because life doesn’t get any worse than hating every second of your existence while you’re doing mentally excruciating work.

Loss vs. Gain

We are all too much focused on what can go wrong. And this is especially true for developers.

We are essentially trained to find the bugs, to always see what could go wrong. But this mindset is exactly what is destroying your career, life, and happiness.

Because on the other side is the question – what could go right?

And if you already feel like dying inside, there isn’t that much downside from that point.

The Good News

As a developer, you gained so much valuable knowledge that can be profitably used in your next career.

This means your transition can be much less painful than you might imagine.

The only question is – how do you use this knowledge profitably from day one?

I can’t know all the specifics of your case, but I can share my story of how I never had to look at the code again.

Hope this helps.