Originally Posted by bradthepilot

I've had a great career in software development and am now thinking about going the other way. Still, it's a great field to be in and one where you can really make a great salary. There's lots of demand - in the MSP area, the unemployment rate for software developers is something like -2.3% for the most recently available numbers (the minus symbol is not a typo).

It's also one where everyone wants in on the lifestyle, so there are lots of folks who are mediocre at best. Be prepared to deal with them. Learn everything you can, and don't play favorites with the technology - instead, become knowledgable about the relative strengths and weaknesses and be able to speak to them with some level of expertise.

It pays well enough that you can still fly if you want to - I earned enough from writing an app on the side (not my day job) for Palm Pilots a while back to buy everything needed to build and fly my RV-6A which I fly about 20 hours a month on X/C trips and aerobatics. You won't need to give up flying to go this route...