
Ask HN: Looking for a career switch - DangerousBear
Looking for some suggestions as I&#x27;m completely lost.<p>I&#x27;m in my early 30&#x27;s and have been a developer for about 8 years now. I have worked primarily in early stage startups, and across the stack - UI, backend services and devops. I&#x27;ve been a tech lead and have built apps from scratch. I&#x27;ve enjoyed it thus far.<p>Last year I had to take a break as I was extremely burnt out. I was constantly stressed and that caused significant anxiety. Been off for few months now and I feel better. Unfortunately I&#x27;ve almost run out of savings and have to start working asap.<p>Looking through job openings, something stuck me. Most of them don&#x27;t seem interesting anymore. Even the ones at good, exciting companies (which I would&#x27;ve joined without a second thought a year back). Something has changed in me and I have a feeling tech just doesn&#x27;t excite me as much. There is too much complexity to deal with in terms of tools, languages and frameworks and I don&#x27;t know if I have it in me to keep doing this forever.<p>Now don&#x27;t get me wrong, I still enjoy coding. I enjoy experimenting and building stuff. Just not all the time. I&#x27;ve been a team lead and I don&#x27;t particularly enjoy managing people. Its just not for me.<p>Is there any related career path where I can use my tech skills and still not be a full time developer?
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Davidbrcz
You could try to get away from app/web field where there is a bazillion of
languages and frameworks and move to another fields with bigger inertia. This
means the rhythm of adoption of new language and features is slower. For
instance, embedded systems heavily use C and there many big Java or C++
applications. One drawback is that you may end up with a 20 years old messy
code base to maintain ....

You may also want to try freelance. It is hard as you need to find clients but
you are you own boss and pick whatever job you want.

Depending on your education, you could try to join a laboratory as a research
associate.

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DangerousBear
Thanks! Freelancing sounds like a viable, albeit slow option. Will give it a
shot.

