[jvanderbot]

Most folks change entire careers 3-4 times in their life. It's only in engineering that we somehow decide that "engineering for this team using their tool" is somehow a new "career" when we do "engineering for that team using that tool".

To an outsider, you're just a programmer. No career change at all. I think there's just enough variety in our field that we don't leave much.

[sanderjd]

> Most folks change entire careers 3-4 times in their life.

Is this true? It doesn't seem true to me. Are there data / studies on this?

[lizknope]

I can only think of about 3 people that completely changed profession. I'm 48 and I could list hundreds of people that have been engineers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers since they finished college and are either still doing the same type of job or retired.

[jvanderbot]

Most folks aren't professionals. If you are a farm laborer for a few years, then a hair stylist, then a cook - that's two career changes.

My professional white-collar wife has done 3 changes already and we're barely middle-aged. I've done 2 myself (factory worker -> Researcher -> Engineer).

My Mom has done about 5-6. My dad 1. My mother in law has done at least 5, and my father in law at least 3.

My brother has done 2 (soldier -> sales -> design). My 4 bros-in-law have done at least 3 each (all starting with soldier).

Sis in law has done 0. My sisters are 3,2 and are still young.

Does my story cancel yours? no, but the story isn't clear either.

[sanderjd]

How many of these things are "careers", though? To me, many of these examples sound like doing a bunch of different jobs, not careers.

Was being a factory worker a career, or was that a job you were doing before you started your first career as a researcher?

But I do think this thread is making me realize that this is probably a boring dispute over what "career" means.

[jvanderbot]

Yep - that is the issue. You can define it however you want so it's fairly arbitrary. To answer your question - given it was a major life direction change, I consider it a career change. I'd say a career change probably involves a similar life change in all cases.

[jvanderbot]

In the US, BLS doesn't classify "career change" b/c there's no clear definition of one. But there's lots of articles that claim this, and it matches my experience from my professional friends.

BLS does say you'll switch jobs about 12 times in your career.

[sanderjd]

Jobs, sure, no debate there.

And I will stipulate that there are some definitions of "career change" that I guess seem plausible, for which "3-4" seems reasonable for "most people", but I dunno, those definitions still seem like a stretch to me...

Should it count as a "career change" when I went from working at a pizza shop early in college to doing test prep and tutoring in the middle? Or from that to little freelance contract programming projects later? That was a number of different "jobs", but I think zero "careers". Or has it been a career change when I've left different kinds and sizes of software companies in various industries for other ones of other sizes and kinds in different industries? Or when I've switched roles from pure individual contribution to more technical leadership? This is also a bunch of different jobs, but I think of all of it as one single career...

I think of a career change as being from one thing a person has done for long enough to be skilled and successful at it, to another thing requiring training (formal or informal) on a new set of skills. Is it actually common to do that 3-4 times? I do know a fair number of people who have done this once. I can't think of a single person I know, of any age, who has done it more than twice. And the one person I know who has done it twice gets a bunch of good-natured ribbing about always being in training and spending hardly any time doing.

Is this just a definition thing? Is my bar for what is a different career unusually high?