[petcat]

You have to actually like the work though. It's one thing just to recognize that it's a good career with a lot of security and good pay. But if you don't actually like the work, i.e taking care of people when they're at their worst, then you are going to be 100% miserable within 5 years and looking for another career change.

[bryanlarsen]

The local hospital had 2 nurses who committed suicide during COVID. Nursing attracts high compassion individuals and then overworks them so that they cannot provide a proper level level of care. Add the stress of a demanding physical job and the stress of shift work and you end up with one of the professions with the highest female suicide rates.

[testerteert000a]

After decades of clicking on different spots on screens and keyboards, the real stress in exchange for that, and now your peers in AI companies have found a way to unemploy you - there's a lot to like with hands on care that does something tangible that tech rarely does.

[petcat]

Well don't give up your career just yet unless you absolutely love the role of nursing. I'm sure you're thinking the grass is greener right now, but there's a reason why there is a chronic nursing shortage.... It can be a miserable job.

[testerteert000a]

Agreed! Stress in exchange for daily care outcomes I know I did and blood-and-guts adrenaline work has longed ticked the boxes. Tech used to tick the other boxes that I don't care much about anymore especially post AI.

[orwin]

People you tend to for months or years dying on you gets old really fast though. In my family, the 5 doctors are still working (or kept working until retirement), of the 8 PT, only one isn't working as a PT, but of the 4 nurses only one is still working (she's getting a psych speciality), the other all went another way. Granted, we're not in the US where the nurses are paid more, but the reason to stop wasn't the pay but the moral toll.

[testerteert000a]

Agreed, it's a hard job.

I think what is most relevant to me these days:

- When I explain to my family, peers, and the endstate about what I did with my time during working years, I'd like to be able to answer it in a certain way. I stopped being able to answer it in that way by staying in tech, I realized.

- Things over the "months to years" cycle look bad-bad. Shorthand described as I lived through 2008, AI on a timeline looks a heck of a lot like that, and I'd take a morale toll if that's the only toll I end up paying from 2026-2035.

[tracker1]

It definitely takes a certain personality type to be good at it. Empathy, discipline, self-control and infectiously friendly.

On the plus side, men do have an advantage regarding size/strength in terms of being able to help disabled people move. I think this is probably part of why a lot of men become EMTs (similar field/training).