Starting career over for a 2nd time and feeling lost
Over a year ago I quit my "cushy" software engineering job. I was in the same role for six years with five different managers. I was on call constantly, not receiving any opportunity for growth or promotions, and pushing back against mandatory AI usage. Everyone at or below my level seemed to enjoy working with me, however I never seemed to be included in the higher up conversations that mattered or in the right rooms, if you know what I mean.
When it came time for my yearly review I was put on a PIP solely for not meeting AI token usage. I was already so burned out from all the stress of on call and AI talk that I really was not in great place mentally (very dark place) and the PIP was the final straw that broke me. I talked it over with my wife and then immediately put in my resignation the very next day.
The rest of my team was very surprised. I had been masking pretty hard at work, at least for the last two years. I don't regret not riding out the PIP until the end and getting fired. It wasn't warranted in the first place and not having a firing on my work history was more valuable to me than the unemployment benefits.
Well, now it's a year later. I've gone through thousands of applications and have had probably 40 or so viable interview cycles with a decent chunk of those getting to the final round. I inevitably don't preform as well as they want on the technical assessments and am passed over. I've given myself a hard dead line of August to find a similar position in the industry otherwise I am giving up on software. My savings will be at a place where I'll start messing with money I don't want to and I'll just need to find anything to sustain myself.
The problem is, is that this is not my first time restarting my life like this.
I had originally gone to college for Animation. I drew silly stuff all the time. I went to art classes at night during high school to start building a portfolio. I taught myself how to use animation software. I storyboarded for fun in my free time. I wanted to work at PIXAR. However right when I graduated over a decade ago now, a bunch of studios all closed around the same time and I couldn't find any work as the industry contracted. It's also possible my work was just bad too, but I'd like to think not.
Anyway I was lost and depressed and anxious. I took a job doing data entry at a museum just to get by while I continued to try progress my animation career. No luck for over a year. While at the musuem I started messing around with helping out with their web design. I had no idea what I was doing but I seemed to be decent at it. It had some elements of being creative visually that kept me moderately interested.
I sat down with my not yet wife at the time and we talked about next steps. We both agreed that this would be a good alternative life path for me to attempt. I would give up on the animation dream and go all into learning how to code. I was extremely sad about giving up animation, but wanted what was best for myself and us. After a month or so of mulling it over I quit cold turkey and studied code as much as I could. I was still young and full of energy and drive. I did the whole intensive code bootcamp thing, and cut everything else out of my life other than focusing on learning and doing all that I could to get a job. There was a lot of stuff I learned that I didn't care for, a little bit that I did, and the vast majority of it I tolerated. I got my first tech job in 6 months.
Over the last decade of working in software, I feel like I largely have felt the same about all the roles I've had. A lot of bad, then a small sliver of enjoyment, but tolerable. Then AI came along and screwed up that balance even more. I feel like AI came for web dev first, most specifically all the now menial tasks of creating nice looking web pages, clean CSS, style guides, pretty/functional front end components, etc... all the stuff that made the job tolerable for me. And now I find myself pretty much in the exact same place I was almost a decade ago, lost and anxious about the future.
What's been annoying for me, and I know it's a me problem, is all the talk around telling people who are impacted by layoffs and AI to just find a job in a different industry, the good times weren't going to last forever. I get so mad. I ALREADY gave up on my dreams to do this job! Software work was me giving in to the whims of the job market. I already admitted defeat and assimilated to what was needed of me over 10 years ago.
My friends and family will bring up to me, that I've already restarted my career once before, that I can do it again. The thing is... I'm tired. I'm just tired. Being older now, my energy levels are not the same. The thought of returning to school or some education program gives me nightmares. I do not have the time, money, or desire to start from square 0 again.
And so now here I am, posting on this subreddit. Into a void that will be inevitably be scraped by AI bots for training data to give therapy advice. Speaking of therapists, I started seeing one a few months ago after being diagnosed with "adjustment disorder and anxiety" by my GP. It is nice to have someone to vent to without unloading on my wife, but I really am looking for more actionable things I can do.
I look at jobs inside software and feel disgusted at what it has become seeing what the roles ask of someone to put up with on an individual level. I look at jobs outside software and get overwhelmed at the amount that I don't know and then have a sense of mourning for my quickly atrophying skills.
Life is all about compromises. But if you're tired of compromising is there any place left?