I've been a dev for 20-ish years, working mostly in Java and Python. I work for a large FAANG-ish company on problems related to large distributed software systems. By most measures, I'm pretty successful, "Sr" in my title and whatnot.
But lately I'm suffering the burnout/apathy/midlife-crisis that seems so common, and I'm wondering if a big shift might be warranted. This last weekend, I was thinking that exploring some other area of engineering might be interesting. Right now, something physical sounds interesting: structural, electrical, mechanical etc. (Heck, right this minute, even carpentry sounds good.) I have near-zero experience with these worlds.
The salaries for these positions are all half of what I'm making now or even less, which might be fine if I was sure that I'd be into it, but I'd like to get sure.
I'm thinking a "baby step" toward an alternate career might be to go work on the software that powers them, where the structural/electrical/mechanical engineer is the customer, using software or physical products that I'm writing code for. Ideally, I'd work at a place where I could interact with customers directly, though I realize that may not really be how things work. My thinking is that I could get some exposure to those worlds without totally retooling and taking that risk.
Does that seem crazy? What opportunities might be available that I haven't thought of? Anyone worked in these industries or for these companies that has experiences they might want to share?
But lately I'm suffering the burnout/apathy/midlife-crisis that seems so common, and I'm wondering if a big shift might be warranted. This last weekend, I was thinking that exploring some other area of engineering might be interesting. Right now, something physical sounds interesting: structural, electrical, mechanical etc. (Heck, right this minute, even carpentry sounds good.) I have near-zero experience with these worlds.
The salaries for these positions are all half of what I'm making now or even less, which might be fine if I was sure that I'd be into it, but I'd like to get sure.
I'm thinking a "baby step" toward an alternate career might be to go work on the software that powers them, where the structural/electrical/mechanical engineer is the customer, using software or physical products that I'm writing code for. Ideally, I'd work at a place where I could interact with customers directly, though I realize that may not really be how things work. My thinking is that I could get some exposure to those worlds without totally retooling and taking that risk.
Does that seem crazy? What opportunities might be available that I haven't thought of? Anyone worked in these industries or for these companies that has experiences they might want to share?