[trynewideas]

These are big-break stories, not career-switching stories.

Yuan had been working on online teleconferencing since 1997 and was managing a team of 800 at Cisco when he left 13 years later. He didn't career-switch, he doubled down on his career.

Baszucki graduated from Stanford in computer science in 1985 and had been working on physics simulation software since the late 80s, with Cassel. He sold that simulation startup in 1998 for $20 million. Roblox didn't ship for two years and didn't take off for almost 10 years, by which point Cassel was dead of cancer.

Lee worked in comics at the same company since he was 17 in 1939, had his first writing credit on a Captain America book two years later, and was named interim editor the same year and never left the role. He was considering switching careers out of comics right before writing the Fantastic Four, but he started working in pulp and comic fiction as a teenager and never left.

Samuel L. Jackson graduated from Morehouse in drama and founded a theater in 1972 at 24 years old, and had been a professional stage actor since he was 32; his first feature film role was in the same year. Morgan Freeman was his mentor. "Jungle Fever" was his fourth Spike Lee film; his performance as a crack cocaine addict came after exiting rehab when his heroin addiction turned into a coke addiction.