[curiousllama]

Most folks who I know who made a large career change did one of two things:

- Hard shift: quit their job, went to grad school, and started over.

- Soft shift: got an adjacent job w/ a company w/ many roles (consulting, big tech, etc.), slowly got good at the adjacent role, and then title change.

I don't know what's best for you. Option 2 is safer. Could look like:

- Get a job doing UX in/around tech services/consulting/cybersecurity (eg IBM, Palo Alto Networks).

- Get on a team with cybersecurity engineers (eg, GTM for a "new cyber offering")

- Slowly build up your PM or technical skills (eg, start by learning SQL & doing reporting)

- When you're actually useful in the new area, ask about a role change

Keep in mind this is a lot of work.

- You're gonna need to go from No knowledge -> Junior -> Mid-Level -> Senior.

- Your opportunity cost is 1-3 promos in your current track, which would probably radically change your day-to-day anyway.

Good luck!

[douglasisshiny]

I might suggest a third option, which I pursued. Found a job at a public university system in my pre software development role. Received tuition remission and worked full-time while also going to school part time (online) -- my job would cover six credits a semester. And since I already had a bachelors, I was able to get a bachelors in computer science with 42 or 45 credits, and graduate in about 2.5 years (including summer courses).

[cudgy]

Aren’t new CS grads having a terrible time finding work given the combination of AI and layoffs?

[douglasisshiny]

I can't speak to that (I'm about a decade in). I have read some things, but they're anecdotes and the majority of people who find a decent job out of college probably aren't going online to talk about it on reddit (compared to people who cannot find a job). The best data I can find quickly is from the NY Fed showing the unemployment rate for new college grads (aged 22-27) is 5.3 as of late last year: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...