[neonlights84]

I've been navigating this question myself - in the mechanical engineering world.

Much of my background is in product design, particularly sheetmetal enclosures. I grinded through a few different jobs in that space, picking up some skills in CAD Administration, PDM (think engineering document workflows), and programming (mostly VBA and Python). I saw myself moving away from product design/manufacturing into engineering automation... but I kept getting pulled back into designing widgets.

In my early career, designing widgets was fun and interesting. Even got some patents. But indecisive customers and overpromising salescritters made the experience extremely frustrating. Some people just love to quibble with designers over minutiae, resulting in delays and overruns. "Sure, the product is functional, but... it doesn't look like what we had in mind."

I got laid off this past summer, but lucked out with two competing employment offers. Company A needed a product designer, and they needed a CAD/PDM Administrator as well. Company B needed someone to reverse engineer existing CAD models and program mesh generation scripts for simulation software verification models. In comparing these, I realized I had an opportunity to pivot away from designing new manufactured products - and negotiate for more money in the process. So I picked Company B, even though my skills were probably a better fit for Company A.

Since starting my new job, I've found myself lately enjoying lots of downtime. In product development, I was always scrambling to produce and change designs to meet ever-evolving requirements. The design process often trends toward instability and complexity as requirements contradictions arise. In contrast, reverse-engineering naturally reaches a point of stability, and quickly. It's very satisfying doing well-defined modeling tasks and knowing that the tasks are DONE.

Future-proofing a tech career is often seen as an exercise in skill-building, focusing on what employers are trying to acquire in new hires. But I think tech workers really need to think about eliminating their career pain points as well. Reducing burnout can open your mind to new career possibilities.