[slindsey]

I expect there are many careers that are similar. In some ways, your experience doesn't matter. A civil engineer with 40 years of experience building houses, malls, or parking garages is still a rookie if they're building their first bridge, right? Many concepts still apply, maybe even most, but it's still going to be new and difficult. I have over 30 years experience as a software developer but I wouldn't want to program for medical equipment or dive into complex low-level architecture that I haven't thought about since college.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

> I wouldn't want to program for medical equipment

After having done that for close to 20 years, I'm sure you'd be fine. You might not want to do it, but you most likely have the appropriate skillset.

[al_borland]

I find when you’re in something everyday, it just is what it is. Yes, medial equipment is mission critical and has to work, but unless it is a brand new start up, someone is probably going to walk into a place that has system in place that take that into account.

When I started out I was in a command center for stuff that was pretty mission critical. It became pretty normal. I once walked down the hall and overheard someone say they had to log into production yesterday and they were terrified, as they hadn’t done it in years. Meanwhile, I hardly thought twice about it, as I was dealing with production systems all day every day… logging into hundreds of systems some days. I wasn’t careless, but also wasn’t terrified.