[giantg2]

The downside is for people disabled. Maybe they aren't a terrible dev but they aren't a great dev either. If they're on par with outsourced labor, they aren't so safe. But what else can they do?

If I lost my job right now, I'd be totally fucked. I'd end up working at Walmart. Masters degrees might as well be toilet paper.

[pc86]

I remember driving through West Virginia with my parents to visit family as a kid, and my dad was lamenting the fact that its full of the haves and the have nots, with the distinct implication that the haves did something wrong to end up there, and the have nots would be just fine if it wasn't for those pesky rich people. I was just left thinking that if life was haves and have nots, shouldn't you spend your time trying to be one of the haves rather than lamenting the way reality was? But in reality, both those views are overly simplistic.

It's a pretty big leap to go from a software engineer to Walmart. The median software developer (~$110k/yr last I checked but could be outdated) is somewhere in the upper teens as far as income percentile (20% being around $100k and 10% being around $150k[0]). Pretty much any non-management role at Walmart is going to land you in the bottom half.

I'd be curious (but it's none of my business) what about your situation makes that the most likely outcome. I'd bet there are ways to head that off.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

[giantg2]

Just in general, what do you think an alternate job would be for an ex-dev (without spending 10s of thousands on reschooling)?

Seems like retail, warehouses, and other unskilled labor are the main options. Even something like teaching would require a certification.

[pc86]

Basically anything tech-adjacent - product, "business analysts," management. Maybe something like tech writing but there are going to a lot of decent devs who make terrible tech writers so that's much more on an individual basis. And then there's the devs who still code but that's not their focus - SDET, devrel, that sort of thing.

Devrel would actually probably be the easiest thing to get into with a few years' foresight. Building a following on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter/X, etc. will make it infinitely easier to land that first devrel role.

You bringing up teaching is a good point - I'm not sure about where I currently live but where I used to live you could get a substitute teaching cert basically by just passing the background check and having a college degree. It was pretty easy to get an add-on certification as well to teach your subject or closely related ones. I can't say what it's like everywhere though, and to be honest most of the people I know who have teaching degrees have left or wished they could. But if you can get a job and can deal with the bullshit you're basically set from a put-food-on-the-table standpoint.

[giantg2]

Most of those roles you list require strong interpersonal skills. That's usually not something an autistic person is strong at. Not a big market for many of those either (dev rel, tech writer).

[throwfish3000]

I'm looking to switch into IT from teaching. The job security in teaching is the best but half of my colleagues are in psychotherapy. Last year we had 30% of our teachers on leave. It's not a happy life unless you're a social butterfly and unless you enjoy yelling at kids.

Can't wait till I'm out.

[FrustratedMonky]

Options:

Tech Writers - nope. Nothing dealing with boilerplate text is safe, in any field.

Twitch/YouTube - nope. That is just celebrity economics again. For every half dozen people that make it (and make it is just back to median dev salary) there are thousands that only get a few viewers.

Teaching - this is option. But as noted by others. Can have own problems and a lot of people leave.

I'm an old Dev looking for second career, and it is tough. The option is to just re-skill and be dev again in another industry. Dev's be Dev's. It doesn't seem like there are many upward paths, and limited sideways paths.

What, product manager, analyst, marketing? Tried them, they all have downsides.

Even with all the crap, I only find comfort in creating things. Coding.

[fuzztester]

If talking percentiles, you probably mean 80th percentile instead of 20%, and similarly for the other number - 90, not 10.