Career not going nearly as well as investments anymore

R

RioIndy

Recycles dryer sheets
Joined
Nov 20, 2011
Messages
102
I'm in a weird place at 32 years old.

On the positive side: Investments are doing well, and I have hit a small milestone of reaching 800K net worth. This all came from my previous career + the compounding interest on those savings.

On the negative side: I left my previous career (banking) as that industry is quickly dying and laying people off due to automation / AI, and have now spent 3 years trying to make a new career work in software development, which was supposed to be one of few remaining industries holding out against being automated. But this past year the company I was working for let go the majority of the team, saying that they now only need senior developers with a minimum of 5+ years experience. They no longer want to invest on training people up who have 0-4 years experience. The work that used to be commonplace for junior / intermediate level developers has now been largely automated in 2019, or they are only willing to give it to unpaid interns :facepalm:.

I'm having to ask myself if it's worth it to continue. Looking for other jobs only reveals bleak prospects. I have made SOME money doing this, but when factoring in how much time I have spent pursuing this career so far (3 years), and part of that was being accepted into and graduating from a very highly rated training program that only accepts top students, and how much of that time was making nothing from it at all, plus how many more years of intense, unpaid training it is looking like it's going to take before one is hire-able as a developer now in 2020 and beyond.

This was the industry where there was so much demand that you could spend 3-6 months training and you would have swarms of job offers from all directions, and you could readily secure regular well-paid freelance work. But it looks like I caught the very tail end of that. Those heydays were 10 years ago and that well has completely dried up in just a few short years. None of the other people who I graduated with from the training program are doing any better. Most have had no success at all. And now many of these training programs and coding bootcamps are quickly shutting down as their students are no longer able to get jobs.



So now what do I do? :ermm: Most say I'm still too young to retire, but the last couple years I made more money from my investments than I have from most of my working years. And doing unpaid work with the hope that in a couple of years I might get a mediocre salary or some exploitative contract gig doesn't make any sense :crazy:.

At least I can be very thankful that I was able to hunker down and save like crazy between the years of 2010 and 2017 and then taught myself how to invest. I feel especially bad for people who are in their 20's or younger today, as there doesn't seem like there are any (or very, very few) promising paths that would allow one to get ahead anymore, and it's only going to get worse if things keep going in this direction (ie automating everything).
 
OP you don’t have enough to retire unless you move to a place with an extremely low cost of living. Keep grinding. Good luck!
 
Agree you need to hang in there. Are you tied to your current location? If so, invest time in networking locally - most cities with significant tech employment have multiple formal and informal networking opportunities. Have you had your resume reviewed for the right keywords to get through online screening? Is your LinkedIn profile up-to-date and have you built up your connections there? What about looking for software jobs related to banking/finance that could build on both of your skillsets?

I hear your discouragement but I think there are still significant opportunities out there for you to build your skillset past the point of where automation can take over. Good luck!
 
nancyfrank232 said:
OP you don’t have enough to retire unless you move to a place with an extremely low cost of living. Keep grinding. Good luck!
Click to expand...

I'll add that both FIRECalc and ******** (huh odd that that other calculator is obscured), both report 95%-100% success rates for my level of expenses and AA.

I'm fine working more years, but there's no way I'm going to do any more unpaid work.
 
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It is admirable what you have accomplished by the age of 32 when most others your age are just getting started. That being said, you are probably too young to consider leaving the work force now, and definitely don't have enough to live for a potential 60 more years in comfort.

This may be a time to re-invent yourself by going into a different field that sounds more appealing to you (something that you WANT to do). Take some classes, stay open to new ideas, and options, maybe try something less stressful, now that you know how to handle money, and invest it properly.
 
software (generic coding) is either moving off-shore to India/China (now execs are aiming for Africa) or being automated.
You could try immigrating to a high growth area like China...
Otherwise hands-on jobs in nursing (RN/LPN/CNA) are going to be growing and tough to automate. But the work is far different from banking or software....
 
What about looking into a career in cyber security? Stay in tech, and it's a very demanding industry.
 
Spock said:
software (generic coding) is either moving off-shore to India/China (now execs are aiming for Africa) or being automated.
You could try immigrating to a high growth area like China...
Otherwise hands-on jobs in nursing (RN/LPN/CNA) are going to be growing and tough to automate. But the work is far different from banking or software....
Click to expand...

A few years ago, many people including myself had pegged nursing and coding as the two of the last hold outs that would not be automated any time soon. Sadly everyone underestimated how much of software development would quickly become automated / sent off-shore.

I can confirm first-hand that companies are now going to Africa for most new coding jobs, as those people are willing to work for $10,000 / yr or less (which for them is still a huge improvement).

The downside to nursing is it means several years of expensive tuition and years worth of lost income. So the ROI there means it would be several years, if not a decade before I came out ahead.

Currently I am thinking I might be better off just continuing to live a bit below my means for a couple more years, survive another dip or two in the markets. Perhaps get a simple gig as a barista or similar, which has virtually no upfront cost or time investment before getting paid, even if it doesn't even cover the bills. Open to suggestions and alternative ways of looking at it though (hence this thread).
 
When I was in my early 30s, I worked in the manufacturing sector leveraging my college degree. After 4 rounds of "down-sizing", the plant I was working at closed and I was laid off. My choices were to stay in the industry and move out of state and go back onto rotating shifts, or to stay put and change careers. I chose the latter and turned my hobby (computers) into a new career. Twenty-three years later, I am now ready to FIRE. Re-inventing is possible and usually necessary in today's world.
 
Don't be fooled by your market performance. The last decade was extraordinary.

Now go look at the prior one and decide if you'd want to be making a retirement decision with your assets on Jan 3, 2000. (spoiler, you would Not.)

that said, you are 32. You have plenty of time to switch careers. I think if you broaden your horizons on tech dev work you'll find it. Especially if you consider other locations.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm reading a tone of resignation in your posts. If you needed to keep working, for, say, 10 years, and bringing in decent income - what do you WANT to do?
 
DH has been at the same employer for 33 years, which is quite a feat these days. He's been in software R&D most of that time. Over the last 10 years, his employer has steadily been farming out a lot of the software development to companies in India and importing workers from there. In fact, the largest non-native population of workers in his building are from India, here on work Visas. It's quite a different company from when he started, that's for sure. It's all about cutting costs, whether as you've experienced with AI or importing/outsourcing cheaper human labor.

No specific advice, other than I wouldn't work for no pay, despite your impressive nest egg.
 
Aerides said:
that said, you are 32. You have plenty of time to switch careers. I think if you broaden your horizons on tech dev work you'll find it. Especially if you consider other locations.
Click to expand...

I agree with Aerides. Life is long and you are young. You need not beat your head against the wall trying to continue doing what you have been doing. I went back to school at the age of 30, went into a new career as different from my first as night is from day, and moved 500 miles away. In the course of doing that, I ran my net worth down to zero. But 30 years later, I'm now retired and enjoying life.
 
How are you doing physically? Are you at all open to the idea of working in the trades? A union apprentice carpenter makes over $20/hr around here. Other trades pay even better: mason, electrician, welder... You get paid while you train and they’re not going to automate or offshore plumbing anytime soon.

Are you married? If not, can you woo a rich person? That was my plan. It didn’t work out, but at least I tried.

And $800k is plenty to retire on, most retire on a lot less, but you’ll be locking yourself into a humble lifestyle. Very likely for the rest of your life. I’d advise not taking that risk.
 
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This was the industry where there was so much demand that you could spend 3-6 months training and you would have swarms of job offers from all directions, and you could readily secure regular well-paid freelance work.
Click to expand...

I spent 30+ years in this industry, most of them doing hiring, and I don't think that's ever really been true in quite that way. Even in the highest of the heydays just before the tech bubble burst in 2000, you needed to be in the right place at the right time and you had to stand out from the crowd in some way to make multiple employers compete for you. It wasn't a thing that routinely happened to newbies fresh out of school. Also, companies have been offshoring development for 15+ years now, so I am afraid that your coding school sold you a bill of goods if they led you to believe you were assured of a career after graduating.

Do you have a 4-yr college degree in any subject in addition to the coding school? If you do, then that and the experience you have in software can still be useful, but you may have to look in different places than you have been. If you don't have a 4-yr degree, then find out what the shortest path to getting one would be and think hard about doing that. I know it's trendy to encourage people to do coding bootcamps and some people have been successful that way, but in my experience a bachelors degree carries a whole lot more weight and will work better for you during slow hiring times.

If you are a U.S. citizen, look for opportunities at companies that work on government contracts. Also, apply for direct government jobs. Your finance background plus the coding experience would be useful in a lot of roles like contracting and funds management. The government doesn't want to give away American jobs, so these are a bit safer than your typical . You won't be working with cutting edge tech, but it's a steady paycheck.

Another path is to become one of the automators. Developing test cases nowadays is really a programming effort, and it's hard to find testers who think like programmers. So consider switching your focus to QA and working with automated test tools.

A third option would be to look for project coordinator roles with the idea of growing into a project manager once you've got some experience.

Also look for remote work. Weworkremotely.com and Flexjobs.com are reputable job boards for remote workers. You may also find some opportunities on Indeed.com.

Lastly, make sure your resume and cover letter are really in top shape. I can't count the number of lousy resumes I've seen from software developers. Take advantage of the fact that you write well in English to stand out from the crowd and create a great cover letter. Askamanager.org is the best site I've seen for resume and cover letter advice and you could do a lot worse than spending some time there.
 
RioIndy said:
I'll add that both FIRECalc and ******** (huh odd that that other calculator is obscured), both report 95%-100% success rates for my level of expenses and AA.

I'm fine working more years, but there's no way I'm going to do any more unpaid work.
Click to expand...

At age 32, how many years are you using for a retirement period? One gotcha with these tools is that there are a limited number of scenarios for very long time windows. I.e. if you setup a 60 year retirement scenario, then the most recent cycle has to start in 1959, but there were some very bad years to start retirement in the 1960s where you might go broke by year 10. If you haven't already done so, just make sure to analyze some 30 year retirement scenarios so you can see how your numbers are affected by more recent data.

Also think about changes to your expenses over time. If you assume a 3% inflation rate, that might be accurate overall, but healthcare costs have been rising much faster than that.
 
Moreover - if you qualify for a security clearance, defense contractors will beg you to take their money, and it can be very good money. Cutting-edge is definitely available, and they can't offshore those jobs. The only downside I'm aware of is that these firms tend to be very megacorpish. Maybe no worse than banking, though (I wouldn't know).

cathy63 said:
If you are a U.S. citizen, look for opportunities at companies that work on government contracts. Also, apply for direct government jobs. Your finance background plus the coding experience would be useful in a lot of roles like contracting and funds management. The government doesn't want to give away American jobs, so these are a bit safer than your typical . You won't be working with cutting edge tech, but it's a steady paycheck.

.
Click to expand...
 
Amethyst said:
Moreover - if you qualify for a security clearance, defense contractors will beg you to take their money, and it can be very good money. Cutting-edge is definitely available, and they can't offshore those jobs. The only downside I'm aware of is that these firms tend to be very megacorpish. Maybe no worse than banking, though (I wouldn't know).
Click to expand...

Yes, DoD contractors are doing well. All areas. I work very closely with the cyber and coding teams. My systems engineering team is doing great also.

OP, work participation rate is at an all-time high as is record unemployment rates. Don't understand why it is so hard to find a job. Good luck.
 
I feel bad being a Debbie Downer, but folks from those quick tech coding training schools did not get a lot of traction during interviews at my former employers in the tech field, where I was a s/w eng for a lot of years. Within the last decade, even the high school kids attending codeathons were fairly well versed. We also liked to groom kids with internships so that upon graduation they were often locked in to our particular development ecosystem.
Years ago when I started, test & qa was sadly seen as a lesser occupation. However, in recent years, it was recognized that test automation, and the ability to think of all scenarios and automate the requisite test suites, is often much more difficult than just writing some app, which has resulted in many of the best coders moving to the test/qa areas.
If you want to leverage your recent re-training, pick yourself up a copy of McDowell's "Cracking the Coding Interview", and if you can work through all the exercises and tests, you'd probably be in a good position to get into a decent tech company....and stash away a lot more $$ before RE-ing. Good luck!
 
OP, I know nothing about programming, so I can't comment as to your career path options, but I do know that 800K NW by age 32 is freeking great. Let it grow. I wouldn't recommend retiring on it in your 30s, but you have achieved a state of financial "independence" in the sense that you don't have to follow any path out of desperation.
That's a real blessing.
Find your way, and let the nut grow, and if things go well, add to the nut.

Something tells me you are going to be fine.
 
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