Five things to keep in mind when you change your career in your 30s

As human beings, we all love to learn and grow. Well, I am no different. I have been a software engineer for almost 20 years now. I have worked in various Engineering domains ranging from telecommunications, web services, and e-commerce to financial services. I love learning new things and the engineer in me always wants to find the solution to the problem.

So, what’s my story?

It all goes back to early 2009. I was one of the lucky few to get into the Big data wave right when it all started with this big data framework called Hadoop. At that time, I was working at Yahoo and was part of the team among the first to move to Hadoop. I loved working on Big data technologies so much that it became the core of my career for the next 10 years.

Early 2015 was when I heard about machine learning and this framework called Spark that was becoming very popular in the big data ecosystem for its support for machine learning algorithms.

Being close to Big data technologies (like Hadoop and Spark), I was immediately drawn to this new space of Data Science and Machine Learning. So much so that I ended up getting enrolled in the online Masters Program in Data Science at Georgia Tech while having a demanding full-time job as a Lead Engineer and a growing family of two young kids. First year in the program, I got an amazing opportunity for an internal transfer, and I ended up switching my job from a big data engineer to a machine learning engineer and changed my career path completely.

Today I want to share the top 5 things that I feel I learnt the way (easy and hard) and I think these would help someone about to begin their journey in the later part of their career.

1. Prepare yourself

This is going to be one of the hardest things you will ever do. There will be changes needed in every aspect of life from personal, family, social, and whatnot. In my case, I had a long discussion with my wife on how this would impact our family in the short and long run. I had to excuse myself from so many family and friends gatherings and sometimes kids’ events too.

Here’s how to prepare yourself:

• Make a list of what you intend to gain from this change and what you will lose.
• If gains are more, you know you are ready for it.
• If not, think again. Is what hat you are losing, worth this gain? If not, you are not ready yet!

2. Plan, Plan, and Plan

I cannot stress this enough. Once I was enrolled in the program, I took printouts of my schedules, kept one copy to myself, and wrote all my assignments, projects, and exam due dates on our family calendar. There were still last-minute schedule goof-ups that came up every once in a while but having our schedule planned made it so much easier for me and my family.

Remember, nobody likes last-minute surprises, including your spouse. I had a demanding full-time job with my studies and this planning in advance, just made things easier on so many levels.

The first year will be the hardest and then you slowly get the hang of it and life becomes the “new normal”.

3. Distract yourself when things look hard

This may sound odd for a piece of advice, but once you are going through this change, you will realize how important it is. The fact that you will have reduced/very little/no social life based on how many courses you take at a time, you will want to make the most of the “free” time you get in between the project submissions or exams or new semester. This is the time when “You do you.”

For me, there were a couple of things I did every once in a while that recharged me:

• Taking kids out for a day at the beach/playground.
• Giving my wife much-needed time to herself.
• The long runs that kept me sane.
• And sometimes catching up with friends.

4. Stay Positive

There will be a lot of times when you will be scratching your head about what is going on. You will feel like you have no control over things in your life. You will have an office deadline and a project due, and your kid will fall sick at the same time. You might end up missing a homework deadline and it will impact your grade. But don’t let this discourage you. Remember to give yourself credit for what you are doing. Not many people can do what you are doing!

Surround yourself with positive people who bring you up when you are down. In my case, I had a very supportive wife, family, and office colleagues. I could not have done this without their support.

5. Apply for jobs before you graduate

Now that we have a rhythm in place and things are going smoothly, the time to graduate will arrive very soon. If you are like me, who wants to be very secure and needs a clear plan for your next steps, you might wanna start looking for jobs before you graduate. I started looking for new opportunities within my company, during my first year in the program, and was, fortunately, able to transition to the new role. It might be hard, very hard to get a break in the new domain, competing with so many experts in the area where you will be a fresh graduate.

But remember “never sell yourself short”. You have gained the extra skills on top of your old skills. Try to find a way to overlay those two and show what unique capabilities you bring to the table!

The journey of learning is hard but as human beings, we always yearn to learn. Change is the only constant in life — as rightly said by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. So, get out there and do what you want to. Nobody can stop you if you stick to your guns! Feel free to comment and ask me any questions. I will be more than happy to share my experiences and how I survived this change in my life :)

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