SE better than RJ; Not better than Major
 

MS in software engineering while military. 9/11 killed the hiring, so professional aviation was not an option at first. Part time military pilot only for a year and half before getting hired as an SE. Worked 3 years in industry, quite to fly for a living again. I enjoy flying for a living more, and working in software engineering has it's own headaches as well. It paid the bills and provided for my family during some tough times.

I was lucky to not play the RJ game. The Master in SE paid much better and quality of life is better than what I "think" the Regional life is like. (hard to judge what I don't know) I would rather be a SE then an RJ pilot. No offense meant to the Regional Pilots. It is all relative to where you are at. The future hiring at majors may open more doors than in years past. If you can get the SE while working....all the better. Then you have options. It can be VERY tedious work and dealing with costumers is usually frustrating. But, I would most likely get back into SE if I lost my ability to fly for a living.

Interesting!
 

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...

This is excellent advice. I am an almuni tutor for Computer Science students at the university from which I graduated and emphasize this heavily. In the few years I've been in the industry, I have seen a lot of people that are comfortable or too lazy to learn something else and they're essentially trapped.

Are you professional pilots? I don't disagree with any of this, and my life was pretty good. And QOL for the kids and wife was great too! But I also enjoy putting my flight bag down and not worrying about deadlines, budgets, emails, phone calls from company, etc., for days (at all really, its all my time) to weeks at a time while making as much or more as a pilot. Just giving some insight into my life working in both industries.

Nope, not yet anyway. Thinking heavily about it, especially since falling back on software is always an option. For that matter, I think I'd probably pick up some contract app development if I did change tracks and go the pilot route.

I wish you good luck in your pursuit of aviation! Having SE work as a backup/additional income stream will certainly help. It is harder to be a pro pilot and pickup work later as SE without any experience. Going SE to pro pilot will still have challenges though! Again, good luck!!

Bump.

Anyone out there working in avionics, automation, drones, etc.? Maybe for a manufacturer or one of the big contractors, or Amazon?