Ask HN: Depressed, need to leave web development, what can I do?
&gt;Nearing my 40s, so my profile is less appealing to employers, this field is very oriented to young people.<p>This has always been the case. In the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, this was the deal, and very well known to all of us in university. Nothing new. One was too old after 35-years-old, UNLESS you were some amazingly great programmer, of course. Obviously. I remember having many conversations about this topic. And this was the case way back then, when the whole industry was young.<p>That being said, there&#x27;s always room for older programmers. Maybe it is not quite as easy, but there&#x27;s a lot of room. Maybe you won&#x27;t get the Google, Facebook type of jobs, but the government sewer district, or an auto parts store with 20 stores would hire you. So it might not be the glamor of a high-end company.<p>I&#x27;m a lot older than you but I can move from company to company pretty easily, because I guess I have more experience - not on the technical side, but on the political savvy side. Office politics. Knowing how to find the back doors.<p>However, this is not about that. You hate the tech field, so none of that matters.<p>I personally have gone from industry to industry, different types of jobs. I have a huge and massive source of skill sets.<p>I know that many say that being a &quot;jack-of-all-trades, master of none&quot; is bad but I&#x27;ve never felt that way. Sure, I won&#x27;t make the huge bucks by being a neurosurgeon making $2 million per year, but then again, even if I did try to do that, I still would never be able to be a neurosurgeon (or leetcoder) anyways. So the point is moot. And I&#x27;m not really a jack-of-all-trades, more like a &quot;near master of a shitload of trades.&quot; That&#x27;s how I see it, anyways. And, I LIKE being a &quot;jack&#x2F;near-master-of-all-trades&quot; so why does it matter if I am not a superstar  master? I don&#x27;t want to do that.<p>So what I am saying is that it is possible to move from one industry, from one trade, to another.<p>I&#x27;ve done programming, sales, insurance, ran a sports school, worked as a high-level bookkeeper&#x2F;financial person, ran multiple companies of my own, worked in retail (I really like it and dealing with the public, unlike most people). I&#x27;ve also worked in a number of other specialized niche fields that I don&#x27;t want to say as it might doxx me. Over the last year I learned a boatload about SEO&#x2F;SEM&#x2F;Social media&#x2F;digital marketing. I did this for others, but now I&#x27;m going to start creating websites of my own and use that knowledge to create my own websites.<p>I do what I want to do. Sometimes it takes me 3 or 6 months to figure out my next move when it is time to move on.<p>I am just showing you that it is more than possible. I&#x27;ve done it tons of times. And what one man, or woman, can do, so can another.<p>But the question is, what do <i>you</i> want to do?<p>As far as your existing work history, of course you have to include it. But you always want to skew your resume to the job you are applying to, as much as possible.<p>So if you are going to do technical writing as your next thing, you then change your resume to say how you wrote reports, or manuals, or instructions and that was the favorite part of what you are doing as a front end web designer, and other things like that. If you decide to, oh, work in a hotel industry in the administrative department, maybe you created a website for a hotel and were intrigued by it and want to work in that industry now. Just make it link up, that&#x27;s easy to do. It&#x27;s totall random association.<p>.<p>If you can go to any kind of meetings in person, if you can find any, that is the best case. You never know who you will meet. I went to a computer security even earlier this year and met the CIO of a Fortune 100 company and spent 3 hours talking with him. He had 10,000 technical people working for him, and here I was talking to him. He offered me a job, but I didn&#x27;t want one.<p>I&#x27;ve been to so many in-person meetings and if you put yourself out there and talk to people, you will find commonalities. So maybe you decide to work in commercial real estate and want to get into landscaping. So you just start attending commercial real estate assocation meetings and boom, you have a job without having to jump through hoops by applying through their website if you impress them. Maybe still apply through a website but it is a formality.<p>&gt;Appreciate any guidance, thanks.<p>What do you want to do? Can&#x27;t help you until you know that.