[austincheney]

I have recently learned there are many lawyers that quit the law to become police officers often maintaining their law license. As an outside observer that seems absurd because the academic requirements and expenses to become a lawyer are high while most major cities don’t even require a four year degree and will pay the cost of the police academy. In some areas of the country police officers earn more than lawyers.

As a rocket scientist, speaking figuratively, you are already drastically to be a software engineer. I would spend a year full time outside of your day job vigorously building a software side project embracing hard problems. You should them have no problem sliding into a good software engineering job.

I work for a big bank and one of my coworkers is a software engineer who in a previous life was a particle physicist on the Super Collider Super Conductor project.