[michepriest]

I started in finance and got into tech. Was a product manager. After my last lay off I decided not to go back to being employed.

I’m creating info products (ebooks, online courses, digital products) and doing micro-coaching (unstuckin15.com). I love that I own my own time and can create whatever I’m inspired by.

I highly recommend mixing with freelance work in the beginning until your projects cover your income. If you explore this, join Daniel Vassallo’s community. It’s full of solopreneurs.

With your background there’s probably tons of products you can create.

[fakedang]

Looks like I'm following the same trajectory. Started off my "career" in finance (not even the quantitative kind), then set up a family office, converted it from a long-short shop to a quantitative one with the help of a very technically confident partner, and just "retired" last Friday.

Career in quotes because I cofounded a startup in university which we sold off. Retired in quotes because I'm such a bad coder that the code base has evolved to a level that requires much more competency than I can contribute. I have always thought of becoming a Data Engineer, since it seems super interesting (and relatively slow paced). Also, it was so hard for us to recruit a competent one (we finally did though), but it seems all the DE job listings want people with 5+ years of experience - there just isn't room for companies to take on a junior data engineer apparently :(.

Currently, I spend my time just building stuff to help real problems, something I've done in my spare time the past few years. For example, I just built a very small applet for my city's transport authority, and if the integration goes well, it might be used by around 300k travelers. It's wild, because three years back, I never would have thought that I would be able to have such outsized impact just by learning some front-end code.

[michepriest]

That sounds amazing! Congratulations

Do you still want to be a data engineer? I wouldn’t let HR “requirements” stop me. There must be a way. 5+ year DEs once had 0 experience

[fakedang]

It's not off the books, although I can understand stringent HR requirements for the role. We had the same requirements when recruiting :P, although we needed someone to be able to hit the ground running. I guess the same goes for most companies.