Leave the industry for software?
 

Currently on furlough with a regional airline (was in airline training as a new hire) and I have a computer science degree. I received an attractive offer as a software engineer and am wondering if it's worth it to even stay in this industry. The offer is $115k base, 40k yearly stock options, 23k bonus. Just a 1500 hour dude.

Ahh the good old crystal ball question...

I also have a Comp SCI degree and I’m currently working part time at a firm doing really easy script baby stuff. Do I like it? No. Is it necessary to pay bills? Yes.

I got into flying knowing this industry is cyclical, I have kept current with my contacts in Comp SCI and have always had a back end and knew I could jump in at any time Incase the industry went to crap. What I would say is if you think you’ll be furloughed for a year or so then take the job but don’t leave this industry completely any flying job is better then being script kiddie at a major corporation in my opinion.

Good luck with everything


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Why choose now? You're on furlough, so take the offer.

When the airline calls you back, then you can decide. At that point, you'll have a feel for whether the software gig is your thing.

this is a no brainer

you will "return to the industry" when you get recalled.

in the meantime, try out your temporary new gig. Thankfully you can bring in six figures, some pilots will be working as Door Dash drivers during their furlough.

Since you have recall rights absolutely take the job, then wait and see what happens with the industry. If for some reason your regional stagnates and others start hiring you may have to consider your priority of career progression vs. money.

I'm guessing you won't be highly competitive for the cargo jobs which are available right now, but that's something to look at as well.

The industry does tend to reward those who stick it out in the bad times... that's typically been the most direct path to enough seniority at a major to be relatively furlough-proof.

I always did other things on the side, especially when things were slow, but I always stayed employed in aviation too. Software can be flexible that way, if you get some professional full-time experience now that will open up flexible/part-time/contractor opportunities later. I'm getting ready to dust off the (very dusty) coding skills myself, just in case.

bottom line is look out for Numero Uno.

nobody from senior management at the airlines will be feeding you apple sauce in your nursing home bed. your wife and kids might tho.

seniority, shiny big airplanes, etc is all cool but do what is best for you.

Take the damn job, duh.

Sorry, seems too obvious to me. What you described is way better finacially than you re gonna see in aviation with 1500 hours until you re called back from furlough... And even beyond that.

That said, if you re really asking if you should consider leaving an aviation career altogether, as someone else said, you dont have to make that call now. But the fact you re asking it at all is telling I always tell people, dont pick pilot as a career unless its the only way you can be happy. Job itself is great. But headaches... LOTS of headaches.

You’re in a position that many wish they were in right now. Take the job. For some perspective, I’m at a regional and currently safe from furlough, but if I was offered that position, I’d strongly consider leaving the industry for good.

This 100%. I would have killed for our company to offer VLOA or even better, a PLOA program for the aircraft I am on because I have opportunities I could explore while still having the pilot job as a backup if I really wanted it down the road. If I could get paid $100K+ a year and home almost every night, I would take it in a heartbeat.

This job isnt worth it until you are making north of $150K and even then, its a stretch. Sure, mainline captain pay and qol are about as good as you get, but that takes lots of time, risk and faith. Who knows how much you might miss between now and then, assuming of course it is even there when you get to it or worse, you cant maintain your health long enough.

I know there are some on here that will dispute this, but there are companies in the market doing everything in their conceivable power to remove pilots from the equation, or at least minimize us. We will see it in our careers to some extent, it's just a matter of how much. Add in that the companies we work for are also highly incentivized to remove us and you have a situation.

Wish we had that option...
 

Ditto a million times

I’m assuming this job is in the Bay Area due to the pay starting and your hesitation. If it isn’t, you would be a fool imo to turn down 180k starting. Even then, you can still save a good amount of money in SF it you’re frugal.

The job is in Boston. I've decided to take it for sure.

Since we convinced you to take it, what’s our cut? :)

Congrats and best wishes!

This has got to be a troll

Sounds par for the course for the industry, albeit a better than average offer. Given that the account was created in 2017, there's no reason to suspect a troll here. Why do you think he's a troll?

That job would have been worth leaving the industry for even before COVID

He was smart and got a degree in something outside of aviation. You usually can’t get a good job paying 150k or so right off the bat with an Aviation Science degree.

because a 1500 hour pilot is really asking whether they should enter this industry right now or take a 6 figure secure job with benefits. If not a troll, maybe he is just trying to humble brag?

why would this be a troll or a "humble brag".

who cares. he asked for feedback. he got it. he made a choice

good luck to him and best wishes.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you think you’ve never been trolled on the internet before because you are incapable of picking it up.

really? now you know me? you know my capabilities now?

I mean, if someone really spent a lot of money getting their certs and ratings because they really want to fly, it’s a lot to think about. Speaking from experience, IT skills are great to have. But the job has its own kind of stress (work constantly coming home). I don’t see this as a troll post and I’ve seen what troll post look like here at APC.

Agreed. I was in a similar position as OP, albeit not yet hired by an airline. Had some very good, high paying non-flying offers on the table. Turned them down because I wanted to fly, and I hated sitting behind a desk. Happiest I have ever been was back when I was making about $70k/yr, with no responsibilities other than flying. I’ll take that over $140k at a desk any day of the week.

Even after COVID, it’s hard to walk away from flying. I learned a long time ago that money doesn’t bring me happiness, but at some point you need to pay the bills.

Best of luck to OP.

Really want fly, yes that's something to consider.

Time and money already invested.... that's sunk cost, cannot be recovered and should have no bearing on choosing the best path forward. Common mistake in any businsess/finance decision is to let emotion associated with sunk costs influence objective decision making.

Not disagreeing, but it’s not as cut and dry either. Money isn’t end all be all. My point was refuting Lonestars accusation of the OP being a troll.

If I am the OP, I take the job and I probably will not look back.

Hey OP, any suggestions on making the leap to Software from aviation? Like is a degree actually necessary, or can one of those bootcamps actually get you a job? Thinking about picking up new skills while on reserve or maybe next year if this all doesn’t get better and lots more of us get the boot.

The bootcamps may work, at least pre-covid, I'll try to remember to ask my brother about that. With bootcamp-type training you're limited to more basic, front-end work unless you REALLY have a knack for coding and self-study. That would suffice for a furlough job, if you're looking at a career change, you should probably ultimately get a degree (perhaps a masters if you can get into a program). Lots of kids were getting hired half-way through a degree program and simply dropping out at that point. For crushing code, they just want to know you can do it. For a career in software engineering, they probably want a degree.

Update: My brother says that the boot camps work best for those with prior experience, who are learning a new language. He's also a bit jaundiced, as a multi-degree professional, he's had some bad experiences with boot-camp types. Also says many of the boot camps are pretty shady, so caveat emptor.

If you’re furloughed why is the seven a question?

Boot camps are good for getting your fingers wet and learning. But what will get you going a new career of software development is the ability to demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of coding. That’s where you will have to learn it and develop something solid.

Degree will help a lot as well if you don’t have an Software development background.

There are other parts of IT industry that isn’t too difficult to get into such as Network administration. There are a ton of certs that that will open the door.

to me this a no brainer. Take the money and run. If and when you get called back, you can decide then what to do. If nothing else, return full time to flying and use your newly found software skills as a side hustle, as I bet it’s something you can 100% do remote either on a contract basis or your own business .

As someone with 25 years of experience doing embedded hardware and software I can say that the tech industry is not what it once was. If you go into the tech industry, either as a backup or a primary gig, be aware:

1) To get most jobs in tech you need a related degree (computer science, math, engineering). Unlike the major airlines that just want to see you with a generic four year degree, a degree in aviation or some such won't matter to anyone hiring in tech. This is why I tell all prospective pilots to get a STEM degree, even if they just want to fly.

10) Pay skyrockets early in one's tech career but reaches a cap sooner too. There are relatively few purely technical workers (i.e. not managerial roles) making in excess of $150K, particularly outside of the bubble of silicon valley. Unless you're a God in your particular technical discipline (and let's face it, most of us aren't, even if we're good at what we do), $100K will likely be the top pay you'll consistently see, and just like in aviation, once you start making that kind of money management will be looking to replace you with two clueless noobs for less than you're making because MBAs don't understand the work we do and the value of an experienced engineer. And they'll be able to boot you without cause, because you're employed at-will and have no union to protect you.

11) Over the last 25 years the tech industry has developed a serious problem with ageism. This is an industry where someone in their late 20s is considered a "senior" engineer. Even if you are making good money, you better have a plan to be working for yourself or doing something else by age 40 or your employment prospects will be diminished. The days of Bell Labs and gray-haired engineers with 30+ year careers are over. Even if you wind up getting stuck in the regionals your entire career you'll make more over your career in aviation by virtue of the fact that you can be employed through age 65. Good luck retiring from a tech gig.

100) People moan about the prospect of commuting every day to the same office and doing the same thing with the same people each and every day. I really liked that degree of predictability in my schedule but I can see how some might hate it. With that perspective I now enjoy my ever-changing schedule in aviation, but there is something to be said for predictability and the associated lower stress levels. If you want a family and don't want your wife blindsiding you with divorce papers because "you're never here", that grind might be worth it.

101) On a philosophical note, I got into tech and enjoyed my job because I was helping build technology that made people's lives easier. Back in the day we built bulletproof systems with 5-9 reliability because we understood the contract of service we had with our customers and engineering requirements ruled the roost. Now tech is all about extracting as much money from the customer as possible while stripping them of their privacy and rights, to the extent that engineers are forced to make bad engineering decisions precisely to fulfill that strategy. If you go into tech, you need to be comfortable with doing lesser quality work to appease the myopic vision of those whose only metric of success is their bank balance.

This is a great post, however I have some questions.

1. Is the agism argument mostly in Silicon Valley or do you feel that spreads to all areas of this field?
2. How easy is it to find decent paying tech jobs that can be done while on the road?

Thanks

1. I think is area dependent.
2. not hard if you are some kind of consultant or software development/database work. This can be difficult in some cases with networking administration/cyber security.

Ageism is real throughout the industry, however, it's particularly bad in SV.

Unfortunately it's hard to find "good" remote tech work for a variety of reasons, most having to do with trust. More companies are opening up to the idea of remote work, especially since covid hit, but you generally need to have experience in the field and be able to demonstrate that you can be productive in a remote work environment before someone will hire you to do that.

Yes, definitely locale dependent. The bay is considered the top of the heap by many so they have plenty of applicants at the top companies and can be picky... they choose to be picky about age.

Definitely, I would go run to the bay for a tech job, there a ton of openings nation wide in different fields of the IT sector. The most likely job will turn into a remote job will be software development/engineering. Otherwise you will be going into the office for other jobs.

Cyber security is another field to get your feet that will provide a solid backup.

I'm thinking about exploring that, I have sufficient foundation to have some options but probably prefer to work from home.

Edit: I agree with Swakid8, was just responding to troll comment. Need coffee.

I work on power plants for a living, and have made easy six figures the majority of my 20 years out of college. Making six figures is easily obtainable, but requires hard work. I get calls on nights and weekends. You also don’t get any real credit for traveling to see customers. 5 hour drive on Sunday to be at a meeting Monday morning, well that’s how it works. Getting a secure well paying corporate job is not difficult, but you will put in a bunch of time every week and it’s expected. The software companies put all the nice stuff in the office because they expect you to live there.

I started building my hours thinking how great a 3-4 day trip would be as an airline pilot as a second career. I travel for 3-4 days at a time now and still have to work several days afterward. I’ll get my ATP in the next six months and will be ready if a recovery happens in a few years.

If willing to put the time in, there are a lot of jobs that easily make six figures. Will it be something you like doing, probably not. Nobody is trolling you on a corporate job paying six figures. I’m typing this out at 5AM, getting ready for day 5 of the work week.

All legit, BTDT and had a lot of fun along the way. Fortunately I got into aviation before the girlfriend upgraded to wife and the kids came along.