Ask HN: How to navigate negative thoughts about starting a career late?

You’ll just have to get over it and do the best you can. HN cannot keep giving posts like this soft advice, especially when so many of you are no where in the realm of teenage years anymore. Even if you were in your early 20s, I’d advise you to not sit around and analyze “the feels”. Everyone’s gotta grow up at some point.

Do your best to be a bit more resolute. Everyone is anxious in life about something.

I can tell you for a fact there is someone your age or younger with a family and mortgage and a career change to think about. There’s probably someone your exact age whose entire career got derailed for any number of factors, wondering if they’ll get another go at it. But here you are wondering if your brain will stop working in a few years, or if you will ever get to write a movie.

You can write your movie right now. It’ll suck, but so what? Write another one. You’ll bomb all your upcoming interviews. Go to more.

From the immortal bard Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“Stop whining”.

Though a bit in the face, this comment has made me appreciate all the things I have in this moment. Good advice, will take a deep breath and will plough through.

I’m only saying it like this because I’ve been through this neurotic phase. It’s a soul leech. At one point I overthought so much that I literally laid in bed in fear for days. It took awhile to snap out of it and realize what a pointless exercise it is. I literally had to tell the voice in my head “shut the living fuck up”.

That voice in my head ran me for many years and one of the ways of turning it off is to literally press the off button on it.

You can certainly find out why that voice exists, it’s a combination of internal and external factors. Regardless, it doesn’t deserve as much time as most of us give it. We all try to rehabilitate that voice, but what we all end up learning is that it’s a one dimensional character in your head. It was never meant to be “saved” (my argument against trying to use therapy to change that voice). It’s best to not give the voice a voice.

So when I’m telling you to stop whining, it’s me talking to that voice you have in your head. You didn’t write this post, that voice did. And I don’t respect that voice in me, or in anyone else and have no problem talking down to it.

I mean, that’s the way it treats you right? That’s the way it treated me. So treat it the same.

> I can tell you for a fact there is someone your age or younger with a family and mortgage and a career change to think about. There’s probably someone your exact age whose entire career got derailed for any number of factors, wondering if they’ll get another go at it. But here you are wondering if your brain will stop working in a few years, or if you will ever get to write a movie.

Feels a bit counter-intuitive to tell people "your feelings are invalid because others have it worse".

It’s not invalid. That particular counter argument you reused has been overused. We live in a relative world. Sometimes you do have to realize your perspective is off when you over internalize and take a narrow view of just your own predicament.

When you over emphasize your own situation without considering what the average situation is like, you exit reality based thinking and enter fantasy world. In fantasy world you operate with fantasy expectations, and since it is a fantastical expectation, when you don’t achieve it in the real world you enter misery.

One must stay grounded, and finding just where the ground is from the air requires you to look beyond your own cockpit. Check the measurements, find the horizon line, look for buildings and yes, other people on the ground.

I can certainly agree that OP shouldn't "waste" time pondering on those feelings because they're unlikely to go away. I've changed career in my late 30s as well and getting a late (re)start in life is very daunting and any lengthy dwelling takes a real toll on your mental health.

> I feel the intertia building up over time and I am afraid of being in a limbo if I don't act soon.

You might be putting too much pressure on yourself to fit a particular archetype. This can lead to self doubt, anxiety, and fear. I would advise against looking at a career in tech for quick money. If you really want to get a programming job you need to put the time and effort in. You might need to start at the bottom and work your way up. Just like any other endeavor.

The average age of a college professor is around 45, and older entrepreneurs out perform younger ones in general, so I think we need to put this cognitive decline nonsense to rest.

These social media forums can be soul crushing. I would advise spending more time in self study and self reflection than reading the paranoid opinions of 20 year-olds.

I can relate. My undergrad is in engineering as well and after 6 years of jumping from job to job I realized I didn't care for engineering.

_What Should I Do With My Life?_ by Po Bronson really showed me that it was/is okay to not be happy with my job and to make a change.

I've written about my career changes here [0] and here [1].

My advice to the "directionless and lost" is to find a job that has meaning beyond paying the rent and food, and that you enjoy, but gives you enough time to pursue your other interests. This helped me tremendously

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33126861 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204355

I'm 40+ and cognitive decline is in your hands. Exercise daily or at the very least walk outside for an hour and you'll be fine.

Definitely solid advice.

It may sound simple, but walking daily, drinking water, and sleeping well (and not too late on either side) are fundamental wellbeing factors.

With these three, cognitive ability is maintained (and improved). Also, if you consume sweetened or carbonated drinks, it’s best to reduce your intake (and perhaps quit altogether). This holds true for coffee and alcohol as well.

Two side notes on helpful factors I’ve discovered:

When walking, it helps to not have headphones on (either music or audiobooks) - allow the mind to decompress.

Similarly, if possible, walk in a park, or any area with clean (-er) air and lots of green. This one depends on your location, of course, and you can substitute green with blue if you’re seaside.

You said it well. One of the things I also strive to do when walking is to focus on things in the distance, especially since I work on a screen all day long.

Yep, opens up the horizon, both of the eyes and of the mind - not that they're necessarily different, but for me it's a very physical feeling in the mind, to move from focusing a foot away to focusing on "infinity".

That's good advice but will have to say that it is unfortunately out of your control. It has a lot to do with genetics than people want to admit.

I have health and mental conditions that interfere with my mental abilities and makes career progression difficult and it's all due to being born with those.

So yeah do eat healthy and exercise but also be realistic. Some people have it easy and take it for granted, other don't, such is life.

You are right, and I did not take into account genetic factors. The advice is for otherwise healthy people who don't have to worry about such things.

Please share the conditions you are experiencing. People struggle with many things, and knowing more would help me sympathize with more people.

Also some of what may be perceived as cognitive decline is simply being distracted and tired from raising a family. The brain-power may come back later once kids are older and caring responsibilities get less. (though that may not happen if you got elderly relatives to then care for. also from what I hear adult "kids" can be quite a distraction too ;) ). I remember being amazed at my grandmother in her 80s still having such a sharp mind, reading sci-fi, beating others at chess or card games. But of course, she had no responsibilities any more, could have a lie-in if needed, not worn out from work etc. I'd guess she may have seemed sharper mentally at 80 than 50. I have another relative like that too, 80 and very sharp.

Stop making homophobic and transphobic posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34402242

> I feel a bit directionless and lost, having coming to realize that I might not be going high up the career ladder considering where I am.

Personally, I realised that just because a job title is more senior doesn't necessarily mean that I want to do it — it's a trade-off that comes with not just more responsibility for more money but _different_ responsibilties for more money.

I found that moving from school/university (very linear, clear if you were doing "well" or "badly") to the world of work, it was easy to get sucked into the mindset of going up the career ladder as what I should be striving for. We don't expect all doctors to become hospital administrators or teachers to become school inspectors but in the private sector there's a focus on moving up all the time.

Moving away from that mindset, I took a couple of sideways/downwards steps and have never been happier. So long as I'm doing a job that I like and have enough money for my needs, what rung on the ladder I'm on doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Mid 40's here. Fed up with engineering after 20 years. Going back to school for biology and biochemistry, then medical school: State-side if possible, but international if only option. No turning back now.

I started my career late after faffing around some years and then getting a second degree myself. Yeah I’m a bit behind some of my contemporaries career-wise. I’m also ahead of some other contemporaries. There are people in this industry who’ve done more in a few years than I could dream of. In the end all I can do is take stock of where I am, where I want to go, and point myself in that direction; all the shoulda woulda coulda in the world won’t change a thing. This isn’t to say that I don’t think about what could have been, but it helps keep me grounded and to remember that comparison is the thief of joy.

As for cognitive decline in your 40s or 50s, that’s the first I’ve heard of that, and the people I know at that age are still sharp and have the benefit of experience.

I’m not in the States either. Tech is one of the best fields wrt global opportunity; even if your passport isn’t the best remote work opens plenty of doors.

Luckily, your interests are very, very inexpensive.

One of the worst things school systems teach us, incorrectly, is that life is a linear progression. Every person on a career ladder is missing out on other career ladders that may be better for them.

Apply to every job that looks interesting, network, get in the habit of checking the careers section of websites you visit.

Locate a job advert you’re not qualified for, spend a week watching YouTubes on the topic, and apply.

Walk 3 miles across your town and count how many “hiring” signs you see. Apply for 10 of those.

Readjust your expectations every day (that’s right, no hyphen) for three weeks and then re-assess (yes, hyphen here). You’ll get a crappy job, but lots of fodder for your writing.

Your next job will be better.

First off, early 30s is young! Some thoughts:

1. Don't take negative thoughts as an indicator of anything. They just are. Using either their presence or absence as some sort of signal is a waste of time.

2. Everyone's winging it to some level. We just don't see it. Meanwhile we are intimate with our own challenges. So cut yourself some slack.

3. Inertia's a bitch. Only cure is action, any action in fact, even when you are not sure whether it's the "right" move or not.

Wrote more on doubt here: https://www.leadingsapiens.com/dont-overcome-self-doubt/

My buddy just left a traditional engineering discipline to go to (a good) law school at 34 years old. He got a huge scholarship and he's 2nd in his class. The other students in their mid 20's think its a lot of work - he says its less work than a full time job.

I just switched to SWE at 35. I'm having the time of my life as a junior web developer. No responsibility, hardly any meetings, just build shit and learn all day and get paid to do it. It's great, even if I'm not earning as much as I was before. I don't worry about cognitive decline at all, because why would I?

If writing and film are your true interests, you probably need to find something that gets you from A (where you are now) to B (writing and film) and positions you for that transition down the road. If the programming is rusty, that limits your options there (at least in the short term). I certainly wouldn't start sweating about cognitive decline in your 40s and 50s - it's several years away, and I don't think it's as common as you're likely reading about recently.

I 100% relate to your question and feeling. I too am in my early 30s, and overcame those same thoughts. Those thoughts plagued me from about 26-years old to about 30-years old.

I remember endlessly googling, "Is 26 too late to start programming?", "Is 27 too late to get rich?", etc., etc. Now, my age doesn't worry me one bit. My perspective has changed dramatically when I truly realized a couple of things:

1. 30s is not old. If you live until you're 65 or 70, that means a career change right now would amount in 30+ years in that field. I felt like my life had passed me by at 28. Now I look at a 28-year old and think, "That dude doesn't know how young he is." So now, I have enough experience to know that right now, I am very young, within the grand scheme of things.

2. My thinking was heavily influenced by social media. All it takes is seeing a kid who is 10-years younger than you making double or triple your salary for you to feel like you're too behind. The reality is most people are not making those types of salaries.

3. Do research on people for whom success came later in life -- there's a bunch of them. And we're only talking about public cases; not cases of late success that never made it into the public eye, which I'm sure there's even more of.

4. I've learned to focus on my quality of life (health, financial security, relationships, learning, growing, pursuing things that I'm into, traveling). My goals are not "getting rich", but rather, getting to a point financially where I don't have to work. That will probably take me 10 - 20 more years, and I'm okay with that. I just don't want to have to work when I'm 65.

5. When we find ourselves in this situation, feeling that life has passed us by, we have to throw time out the window. The problem is, we start thinking of ways we can "remediate" the situation quickly. But progress takes time. So do your best to just stop thinking about doing something quick, and really try and change your thinking to putting in the work daily (even if just a little bit), but being consistent.

I feel like I'm ranting, but I relate a lot to this question, and after really coming to an understanding of my personal situation, I was able to truly free myself by coming to grips with the truth.

I'm not OP, and I'm 23, but your comment quite resonated with me and I want to thank you for it, as someone whose life feels like a constant wreck ever since I was 16.

My pleasure, friend. You mentioned you are 23. When I was 19, I told myself: If If I don't have a girlfriend by the time I'm 23, then my life will have passed me by. Now in my early 30s, I just laugh at how detached I was from reality.

I'm about ten years older than you. Being 23 years old is like having a superpower -- in terms of time, physically, the likelihood of having less obligations and responsibility.

You got this! You don't even have to rush. All you have to do is put in a small chunk of work in a consistent fashion, and in maybe two years, you'll be light years ahead of most people; can't even imagine how much you'll accomplish by the time your 30.

Put in the work and always keep purpose, priorities, and quality of life at the forefront. It's not how much you accumulate or even accomplish. It's about the quality of your life.

I will keep your advice at heart, thank you for it again.

I don't know if my life will be better than the lives of others, though, as I don't have a degree, and I am seemingly less intelligent than others, which limits my ability to learn as fast/income-wise.

Slowly beginning to lose hope, but as you said "It's about the quality of your life."

The information you provided is pretty vague, what is your new degree in? What field are the interviews in? Are these aligned?

Sounds like you are just having the classic I am getting old and running out of time to do all the great things I thought I would do, everyone goes through this. I doubt the feeling ever really fades but don't let it get the best of you.

You need to reset your expectations / ground yourself to your situation, you need to do some real goal setting short and long term planning.

Sounds like your mostly worried about "money" and there is no quick ways to make money. But there are lots of ways to make good money, I get the sense that is why you mentioned programming because it can be a lucrative career. But to be honest its not for everyone and I don't agree with the "everyone can be a programmer" sentiment. You are already well educated in other fields I would recommend exhausting those options before jumping ship.

Of course I know nearly nothing about you so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

What I have seen result in the most career growth is changing jobs often, never stay put. And continuous education with new problems to solve. Your job should be engaging (not 100% of the time but like a wave)

In terms of finding work, I would strongly advise thinking about this as a relationship problem.

First, cold introductions to/interviews in performance/efficiency-based relationships in general are terrible, terrible contexts. Mental model templates apply on both sides. Huge waste of time when one party does not fit into the template/box the other party necessarily has. Has nothing to do with the actual potential for a relationship.

Reach out to people you used to work with, or who you went to school with, with whom you had good interactions, learn what they are doing, who they work with, etc. Someone, somewhere, will know someone doing something interesting to you. Getting a single warm introduction is literally worth 100 cold interviews.

Second, put as much time as you can afford into producing the sort of work you would like to be paid to do, and make it available online. Reprise your academic projects, whatever. Treat this like a job, for a few months, and get stuff out. Much, much better than just a resume because it is actual work and you will learn whether you do like it and have facility for it, and if you do, talking about something you have done and liked is an easy path to conveying confidence. And confidence is very, very important to convey in relationships, old and new.

Finally, as someone in their 50s, on cognitive decline- I would suggest meditating on the serenity prayer- (though for me it is without the god part because there is no literal god, only we storytelling, narrative focused humans in this wonderful, fragile world). But for all our societal advances there are many, many things we collectively don't understand, about aging and other topics. Plenty of people produce creative work into their 70s, 80s, 90s. Maybe you will be one of them.

Know yourself, and take care of yourself, but develop the wisdom to know what is under your control and what isn't, and the serenity to recognize what isn't in your control cannot be lost- instead every day with it is a gift. Use those gifts when you have them, and help others to use theirs.

Best wishes.

Even if you remove the word “God”, God is still implied. If not, who or what are you asking to grant you serenity?

Friend, since meditation is usually a solo, silent activity, the best literal answer to the question is the "self."

Others may meditate or work in therapy/reflective contexts with other humans.

The notion of "self" is fuzzy as there likely are numerous physical and logical biological components that participate in self-talk and response and we (I) simply don't know enough physical and logical brain architecture.

I don't reject out of hand the notion of capital-S "Self" as "God" but "God" is essentially trademarked by multiple distinct authoritarian power structures around the world and their presence, policies, and activities I generally though not in all cases despise. I don't find value myself in promoting that association.

Cheers.

I logged in for the first time in a very long time to reply to this.

For what its worth, those posts made me feel the same way.

But this is typical internet stuff... you see someone doing well, it triggers an some kind of emotion. you see someone expressing anxieties about something you can relate to, it triggers an emotion. Its the same thing as looking at hot people in advertising, or people having fun on instagram. Its not reality.

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

I cannot contribute any advice as I'm 23, no degrees, life is a wreck, etc.

I wish you the best and do your best to get a job and get your life moving. I believe in you.

I realize that my time is more limited than others and think of nothing except working and improving my skills 24/7. I have no time for doubts

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/49p0fwhopZc