I think a bit was a multiple personality disorder, but the rest was purely timely.

“Are you studying what?” was the usual response I received from my peers of similar age. That is a fairly fair question. And some data seems to back up your initial thoughts.

The age range of a person starting an IT career is 19 to 25 years old. (Posts from www.reddit.com, so accuracy is certainly not guaranteed)

The average age of an IT college graduate is 25.4 years. (www.haroldextra.com)

The average age of an IT support technician is 40.3 years. (www.datausa.io)

I found that last age figure somewhat reassuring. I’m only about ten years off the mark.

And that means that people in the IT business stay there for a long time.

Let’s face it: career changes are scary. Especially as you get older.

However, there is an advantage to jumping.

I find it to be like skydiving. After the first, the second is more fun and less scary. You are also more aware of what is going on around you.

It will take some experience to put my desire for a career change in perspective.

When I decided to leave my 20+ year career for a new one, I had part-time income from an independent consulting business. So all he needed from an employer was just a little extra income and affordable health insurance.

My wife and I were lucky. We had very little debt. Single car payment. And we had gotten rid of the house. Watch the 1980 movie “The Money Pit” and you will know what that joy of owning was like. I don’t want to own a home again.

Looking at jobs online felt very strange. He had always used word of mouth to find a new job. Turns out, applying online was too easy.

I guess that’s why so many poor HR folks complain about hundreds of unskilled applicants. It takes the applicant 90 seconds for their web browser to automatically fill out a form, then cut and paste a cover letter and attach a pre-loaded resume to the job posting site system. The HR person takes much longer to review it. I feel bad for them. Hence the current use of candidate tracking systems, I suppose.

I applied as a teller at a small local credit union. Yes. To the cashier. It was the first ad on the front page of Indeed.com in the metropolitan area where I live. Here’s why I applied. The “sound” of the ad copy was like a friend talking to you. It totally resonated with me. I researched the institution online and it seemed solid. So I applied online. No need for a resume. It felt quite strange.

Two days and two interviews later, I had a job and super cheap health insurance. Please understand that I hadn’t made less money per hour since high school, but I accepted the offer anyway.

I was able to take a low-paying job because, as mentioned above, I was able to take a “step down” in income and still maintain our same quality of life. And learning a new industry would be fun. When was the last time you had fun at work?

So, given the first professional leap, we moved to a nice apartment in a new city. My wife got a job Monday through Friday for a Center for Seniors non-profit organization. We finally had a “normal” life and marriage. We both live within a mile of our employers and there are shopping malls and restaurants around us. I could probably even get rid of the car. I am too attached to my trusty Honda.

Now, four years later, I still enjoy my credit union employer. And it seems your little staff has a similar mindset. The help that advertising verbiage sought really communicated a lot about the culture of the company. It is a great place to work.

Since my hiring, I have climbed the ladder quite a bit. Now I am working and helping to create what amounts to a “virtual” branch. We offer members electronic access and transactions. Online loan application and remote closings. And we solve all end-user and internal customer problems. I know how to chat with people from my previous career, which is why I earn about three times as many incentives as my peers. Soft skills carryover from any industry.

Moving from the teller to the member support center to virtual banking required a lot of learning about financial applications. The most exciting part for me was implementing a new internet banking provider to meet the growing demands. Being a part of the pre and post deployment process, as well as the pre, during and after readiness tests (monthly updates), was and still is a great learning experience.

Last week the sysadmin approached me when a question from one of my co-workers called him. He was not available to help her at the time, but I heard her call him about 30 minutes earlier. Our cubicles are close to each other and I use a standing desk so I can almost hear almost all of my co-workers. I smiled inside that I knew more than the professional. And it had happened before. And from.

You are now getting a hint of some of my motivations for a third change in the professional industry.

Another motivation for a career change at 50 is my adorable 13-month-old granddaughter. In short, my stepdaughter was not and is not able to take care of her. We found out when he was one year old that the little munchkin had hopped between three other family families in a different county since birth.

My wife and I had heard enough.

We request and receive permanent guardianship.

So now we are “instant parents” to a beautiful and “back on the road” 19-month-old. Besides my wife, this girl is the love of my life. She is the youngest of three siblings. She was the most careless. It started with the most downsides. And they will hang me if she is not going to be the happiest, the smartest and the most stable of the group. Nonetheless. That’s my goal.

So “instant father” was. However, do some math on the age difference for a minute. That means I’ll see her graduate from college when she’s in her 70s.

Well. With 20 years of working life ahead of him, “Now what? What’s next?”

I really enjoyed working with our new internet banking application provider and all the other providers that made our new system work smoothly for the end user.

And launch day was incredibly busy but fun. I watched the vendor support experts on the site solve problems in just a few clicks. Or write a script on the fly to fix a bug that no one has caught.

He knew what he wanted to do after that.

Be one of them.