| Used to be a programmer. A few years ago, started Hacker Paradise, which is basically a travel company. We organize trips around the world for people (mostly in tech) who want to work remotely while traveling. I came from a background of startups & some freelance web dev, and my co-founder was a senior software engineer. We didn't have much experience in travel, but we both had some experience organize events & managing community (running hackathons in college, etc.). Interestingly, after 3 years of doing more operational / community work, I'm moving back towards spending more of my time programming and tinkering with hardware. My old co-founder already made the switch and is back working as a software engineer. I think the takeaway for us is that there is no panacea. There are some fun parts about operational & community work, but it also ends up being pretty admin-heavy. After awhile, knowledge work becomes something that seems like a lot of fun again. My $0.02 - doing the same thing (regardless of what it is) for 3 decades sounds boring! Feel free to make the jump to something else, but be open to coming back to software or jumping into other areas as well. |