I have no degree at all. I’ve been doing software development professionally for around seven years now. Like many, I’ve started programming as a hobby as a child, around 11 or 12.

I got pigeonholed quickly into enterprise development, mostly at non tech companies of various sizes.

I knew I never wanted to work as a software dev professionally. I had other plans initially that fell through. However I found myself in a situation where my choices were to struggle off of a low skill job or try and break into the industry have a reasonably comfortable life.

Of course, even that didn’t work out as expected. I was significantly underpaid (even with local COL/salary data in mind), still at least it was a foot in the door and a full time job. My salary came more in line with what someone would expect in a small city around the time, but still barely at the bottom of that range.

Around the time of the COVID glut, I finally landed a six figure job, as well as the closest thing I’ve had to a job ”in tech”. It was pretty decent, but half the company was dumped a year or two later.

I didn’t expect to have much of an issue in the market, ignorant of how bad it really was and with the understanding that with my experience I couldn’t be a total pariah. Instead it took over a year to find a new job and that was solely due to nepotism.

A little bit into my current job, I realized my career was dead. I don’t keep up with the industry outside my day to day anymore, I’m certainly not keeping up with newer fresher people and to some extend miss that enthusiasm. But it really does not interest me anymore. Rarely the tech and never the product.

I’ve thought about leaving before that happens, but I have yet to see a path to something else that I wouldn’t hate just as much.

I figure I’ll either die of from stagnation or AI will replace me or lower that value of my work to the point where the money is no longer worth staying

Yeah this sounds familiar. I never wanted to be a programmer, and i don't love it, but nothing else will pay the bills so easily. I turned down a college scholarship because it was tied to learning programming. I've always had a passing interest but never wanted to do it as a job. Now here we are.

This is very similar to my story.