I was 25 at that time. The tech was obscure, so I didn't have the option to move. If moving was an option, then I would have taken it. Instead I'm in my 30s, burnt out, doing the minimum (sort of), and still a midlevel.
At 25, you have the option to move (that is, change companies) even if you worked on obscure tech. At 25, you can find someone who will take you in that situation (though it may take longer than finding someone who wants the current hotness).
Not possible for me. I have a family to support and they have recently developed costly medical issues. Not to mention I don't make all that much (under $100k), so most of my income now goes to expenses (area is moderately expensive even when trying to live cheaply).
Thanks. I honestly think this is the peak though. But that's ok. There are banter people in the world that would love to have a similar situation to mine vs the one they may be in.
I was almost 30 when I started in tech. I'm not in your commonly discussed SV tech scene, I live in flyover country and work remotely for a giant non-tech company. But I got to a point where I was absolutely desperate for any decently paying work. After doing graphic design for a few years (I studied art), I realized that was never going to pay. I did carpentry, construction, labor, painting, literal ditch digging, sign making, and used car sales. Somewhere in there I was a US Marine and went to war. Eventually I stumbled into a QA job at a small company and learned Python.
All this to say, now I'm well into six figures. I've work six crappy tech jobs, really bad ones. I've had one decent one and now, one really good one. I had to fight really hard to get where I am now. I mean this to be encouraging, it can be done, you can do it.
My advice? You can check out at a job, but never check out on yourself. At every crappy job I've been at, there was opportunity for me to learn something new. Job 1, I learned Python and built test frameworks. Job 2, I learned VueJS. Job 3 I learned how to build complete software projects and deliver them. Job 4, I combined development skills with cloud migration, dealt with tons of nasty legacy code, and was able to deliver major improvements to existing systems. And so forth. Also to get better jobs, I've put in hundreds of resumes. One job literally took me 200 applications to get.
TLDR I hope it's not unwelcome advice but I hate to see people give up.
