I just entered my 30’s and have been settling into family life. I have a 2 year old and a wife and house. I decided to make this career shift at the end of my 20’s after putting in a bit of time trying to make the Mechanical Engineering career work. I got a BS and MS in Mechanical and worked a Boeing for a bit. I did not feel that career was lucrative enough and seemed like I was really going to have to push to make the money it took to be comfortable in the Seattle area. I put a lot of work in at the beginning of this degree back in late 2018 to make the switch. I ended up getting my Microsoft job in may of 2019 where I have been since. After that I have been kinda costing. I take 3 classes a year and have been trying not to stress too much with everything I have going on with parenting and working.

For the next 5 years I want to do a bit of interview prep and asses how things are looking at Microsoft. I tend to be pretty conservative financially and put a big emphasis on saving for retirement and my kids college fund. Seattle is also pretty expensive as far as what our mortgage is and the cost of daycare. I think if things seem to be going well financially over the next couple years, I probably will just stick it out at Microsoft since the work life balance at my current job is awesome. I really don’t work that much which will be nice for family life and enjoying things. My wife also works at Microsoft, so It helps to have two tech incomes. I think I will try and apply to some companies. I really would only work for some of the big ones like Google or Neflix or maybe Facebook since they pay well…. I don’t think I would take a job at Amazon since I mainly hear bad things about their work life balance. My main goal is at least to get some offers just to see how they compare to my salary. Ideally Microsoft will be a good fit and stocks will do well and I will just feel good about riding out a career there.