I just said fuck it and am turning to my life long back up plan: military. I have consistently held a part time job in the military for moments like these. My military job pays much less than my long experience as a software developer allows but enough to cover all the bills. I was able to find an open slot for my next required professional military education course in the very near future which will allow me several months of runway to reevaluate civilian life and promote on time (in the military) next year.

As I become old it looks like I am vastly out growing software as a profession and will probably need a masters to become management, a principle, a product owner, or just go do something else. Software, at least web development, feels like a game nobody wants to play without either unrelated technologies and/or massive third party tools to do all the actual development. That means being between the concerns of a legacy tech stack or decisions dictated by expert beginners… just to get hired.