I knew sales were taking over when the therapist started trying to upsell the massage service while I was on the table. Being in IT, I was probably desensitized to this in software, but it bothered me during what was supposed to be relaxing. It certainly helped me make a decision never to return.
Build a diverse network made up of your peers while in school. Don't get caught up in the competition trap, thinking you always have to be better than the next guy to get ahead. It can work, but as they say, it's lonely at the top, and your ROI in building relationships with future leaders is high - something you'll never regret as you try to figure out which way the wind is blowing.
I don't know about the crossover of technical expertise, but this smells like the perfect hedge against the possibility that Congress gets the cajones to defund anything Musk is involved with. You get your funding involved/intertwined with public safety issues, and voila, funding requests are fast tracked.
I doubt coding is the only thing you can do. A lot of us get into coding because we are good at problem solving. If you can define your long term goals, and make an inventory of your resources, I bet you, along with the help of your family, can figure out a solution. I quit my IT job at 35 and became a massage therapist. The act of building my own house at 30 gave me the confidence to try the career change. You can gain a lot of energy doing things you care about, even if it's hard work.
The problem is that I like writing code. I truly enjoy it. I just hate doing it for someone else, on someone else's terms, performing someone else's rituals (corporate/code/architecture).
It's leisure-class over-analysis. For it to work, you have to be revealing something profound about the world, or analyzing the class gap itself (why some people don't have time to analyze).
This bit from Camus' The Plague has always stuck with me as analysis done right:
"He walks quickly. When crossing a street, he steps off the sidewalk without changing his pace, but two out of three times makes a little hop when he steps on to the sidewalk on the other side. He is absentminded and, when driving his car, often leaves his side-signals on after he has turned a corner. Always bareheaded. Looks knowledgeable."
Wow. Keep your last question, turn it into an emphatic statement, and throw away the rest. Your education begins today. If you'd ever had a share of something the hedgies decided to short into oblivion, you would understand this.
The problem is that people tend to look for solutions before they truly know the problem. Practice searching for problems, at the lowest levels, again and again. This detective type skill will train your mind to break things down into manageable pieces. Solutions to problems that have been broken down far enough are usually self evident. But you are looking at end products, wondering why you can't solve anything. Does that make sense?
