I think the massive salary drop off will make the late-career transition from engineering to law hard to stomach. Someone in their 40s or 50s with 20-30 years of engineering experience probably has a family, is thinking about their retirement plans, and is commanding the salary of a senior engineer (at least). Very few people are going to be willing to take 3 years off from work to go back to school only to spend another few years as a junior associate making far less than they could as a senior engineer. A lawyer going into policy or any other altruistic area of the law should expect an even larger salary gap.
What about all the 50 year old engineers who have been made redundant and are finding it hard to find work? A combination of this and wanting a sense of purpose could make this an attractive proposition. Also I think forcing someone this experienced to follow the junior associate track is not a good system. Surely there is a better alternative way to leverage the technologists knowledge snd experience. It's exactly things like this that I expect to be discussed here.
Stop looking for a jobs at all of the cool startups and look for boring corporate jobs. I’m 44 and never have any issues finding jobs and know plenty of 50 year old developers. The difference is that we are all aggressive about keeping our skills current.
