I’m an AutoCAD Drafter and consistently feel held back by my choice in career. I went to a community college and got an associates degree, and I have been feeling as though doing a free software developer boot camp online is a good way to transition.
It’s scary to think about leaving a steady employment in six months to try breaking in to a new career. And some people have written that the hiring bubble has burst, and that AI is taking coding jobs too.
Any advice for someone feeling stuck in their career level?
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What about a trade school to be an electrician ? I hear there’s a shortage there …
I wouldn’t go into programming unless you really love it now. I think the boom of the boot camp era has been pretty solidly over for a few years.
I went back to finish my college degree at 31. Best decision I made, but it wasn’t for coding/computers. Anything that’s not machine learning seems to be a tough labor market these days. Is there any other fields you’d be interested in?
If coding is a passion of yours and you can see yourself devoting all of your time and energy to it, then do it! If it’s truly your dream you will find a way to be successful, despite the current state of the market and AI taking a lot of front-end, entry level jobs away.
If you’re not sure that it is indeed your dream and are extremely passionate about it, I would recommend pivoting to something else. Life is short. You can change your career and job at any point in time, but the older you get the harder it is.
You might just be experiencing burnout. Once I hit my late 20s/early 30s I experienced extreme burnout which led to a nervous breakdown followed by a year of unemployment and was extremely close to homelessness.
I have really bad ADHD, so I get hyperfixated on things and then lose interest within 6 months-a year. So for me, I have realized that the grass is always greener. I pivoted from corporate sales to working for myself in the health insurance field(niche product, not major medical) and couldn’t be happier. I make my own schedule and I work around my life, not the other way around like I had to in my corporate days.
I totally changed my career at 30.
I graduated college with a degree in chemistry, entered the Army where I served as an Infantry Officer, left the army when I was 27, and got a job making decent money working as a warehouse manager. I thought working middle management (I was good at it) and making a lot of money was what I needed to do.
The short version of the Betty is I lost my job right before my 30th birthday. I realized that being stressed and making lots of money wasn’t the key to happiness and I decided to take a chance and try sometime totally different. I had a degree in chemistry and decided to finally use that degree. I got a job working as a chemist for the federal government and I couldn’t have been happier.
I took a 50% pay cut, but the work was extremely rewarding and significantly less stressful than my previous career. Several years and a few promotions later I finally started to make decent money, but nothing like I made as a manager in a shitty warehouse.
I totally would recommend trying something different if you’re not happy.
20 year Software Dev here. Don’t do the bootcamp. Software Development can still be a good career path but you’re going to need the degree. Should be able to leverage your existing Associates to get a Bachelors in something like CIS. Since you have prior work experience and could tailor your resume to make it look like you already have an extensive IT career I think you could transition and maybe not compete with new grads. Dev jobs are in a lull right now in most sectors but Defense seems to be holding steady if you can get a clearance.
X-ray tech, Radiation Therapist, Nuc Med Tech, are all 2 year degrees that pay decent and aren’t going anywhere. X-ray probably pays the lowest but you can specialize in other modalities like CT, MRI, interventional, and heart Catheterization. I did X-ray>radiation therapy>medical Dosimetry and now make well into 6 figures but my field will probably be taken over by AI eventually.
I could have gone straight into radiation therapy or Dosimetry but hadn’t heard of either field.I did electrical in my early 20s and switched to medical in my mid 20s. It was the best decision I ever made.
cut your expenses to the bone and build up a reserve.
then when you can’t take it anymore, you got something to live on, for a while at least.
You tried moving into BIM? Revit?
Dude, I just retired from the Steel Service Center industry. CAD programmers are always in high demand. Most of them leap into developing cut and bend programs for CNC equipment …like tube benders and tube lasers. Lucrative, fun and valued by management … this is the job I would have preferred over management.
Survey. Go learn to survey and coincide that with your cad skills and you’ll be making 90k in just a few years. It’ll open up a lot of options for you. DM me if you need advice