[karaterobot]

My stress-reducing mid-career switch was into a non-profit company doing scientific research in an area that was important to me. I took a pay cut from my previous startup job, but I'm actually happy to go to work every day. The stakes feel lower, since it's not a race against finding product-market fit before the money runs out. At the same time, the victories feel great, because we're saving people's lives rather than selling them useless SaaS products. I can explain what my company does to people, my timelines are on the order of months rather than weeks, there is less of a feeling of constant panic, less cargo cult management style, etc.

The downsides are that the salary isn't fantastic (nor is it terrible), the career ladder doesn't go super high (fine with me) and the software side of the company is more rudimentary than I'm used to, since software is not their main focus.

[to-too-two]

That sounds great. I’d love to do something like that. Any tips on how to find a gig like that?

[karaterobot]

I think I found this company in the usual way, either on LinkedIn or Indeed or some site like that. No secret there.

In terms of evaluating whether it would be a less stressful place to work, I think looking at how they get funding is important, as that seems to dictate the pace of work. When I did contracting, it was always feast or famine, which makes sense given that you only get money when clients having an emergency need. When I did startups, it was always how much work we could get in before we needed more funding, so it was a race to do more work, to get more money, to do more work—a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie, as the saying goes. With science, or at least at this place, the funding comes from long term research grants that last years. The pace is a little like contracting, structurally, except the timeline for everything is so much longer, so you get more time for research, testing, and iterating.

[giantg2]

"The downsides are..."

Those downsides sound like upsides to me. It's likely not a payout for me if the pay isn't terrible. I have no plans to climb the ladder. Rudimentary sounds like fewer distractions and less chasing the latest fad.