To be fair, I am not in AI research either. Sorry if I implied that. I am on the applied side building products using GenAI, we also do some more traditional ML development but I do not spend much time there.
100% what you said about being young with nothing to lose. I had been part of a "start up" so I had equity on paper, but debt in real life. That equity ended up being worth exactly what I had paid for it ($0). I worked at Home Depot (which was a great company) and basically anything was better than making $15/hr and treading water.
For what it is worth, at the time I (24) felt really old because I saw so many 21 year olds who would come in to the store and had houses and everything that I didn't. I felt like I had missed the boat. It's been over 10 years and I realize how young I was, and frankly still am.
My point is that it's never too late to try something different, especially if you are starting from a position of strength (a good career in a field that requires strong problem solving skills, like software engineering).
100% what you said about being young with nothing to lose. I had been part of a "start up" so I had equity on paper, but debt in real life. That equity ended up being worth exactly what I had paid for it ($0). I worked at Home Depot (which was a great company) and basically anything was better than making $15/hr and treading water.
For what it is worth, at the time I (24) felt really old because I saw so many 21 year olds who would come in to the store and had houses and everything that I didn't. I felt like I had missed the boat. It's been over 10 years and I realize how young I was, and frankly still am.
My point is that it's never too late to try something different, especially if you are starting from a position of strength (a good career in a field that requires strong problem solving skills, like software engineering).