Ask HN: Have you successfully done a career do-over, and how did you do it?
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Keep them coming! I didn&#x27;t expect this topic to get this popular.<p>The reason I asked this question is that I am facing a career slump as a software engineer, and finding out that the software industry is brutal if you don&#x27;t know how to carve a path for your own career.<p>And when I mean career slump, I really mean it. I&#x27;m living with my mom at age 35 which is quite the opposite of what someone expects of a software engineer at this age. Most people I know are buying&#x2F;have bought houses and starting families. And I&#x27;m not at a point of self-sustainability yet. I can barely keep up with the insurance payments of my own car, and just keep the vision of having my own place to live in (once more, as I lived alone before things got tough) close to my mind. No longer be dependent of my family, get some privacy, some autonomy and instead of living every day switching between errand boy and going to a coffee shop for the free internet, to apply to jobs, or simply taking a break from my parents.<p>So that&#x27;s pretty much me right now. I have 10 professional years of a &quot;whole lot of nothing&quot;, no big signs of progression, maturity, or taking on more responsibilities. I didn&#x27;t major in Computer Science, but I still expected my first programming job to be like, getting a mentor, working alongside a group of (in-house!) programmers, being able to ask them many questions and learn all about formal development practices.<p>Well, I got none of that in the places that I worked at. So seeing your stories gives me a good idea and hope that I can just move on from the past and have better companies approach me with hope and optimism, like I&#x27;m a bona-fide junior eager to learn.