No field is safe and trying to switch careers over 40 is almost impossible. Even flipping burgers is nearly impossible (very hard to do without pior experience at such age).
Over 40 at least you are almost halfway. Definitely you can switch, if you are a half decent thinker, most things are possible; I am sure you can become an electrician and that, at least where I live, makes very good money. Plumbers you cannot find if you are keedeep in your own poop here. In my home country my old classmates (I have an electrician degree but became a software engineer) are making more than most programmers being electricians. Not sure what is wrong with someone who cannot flip burgers after 40.
Have you tried flip burgers after 20 years in IT and zero manual labor? Forced downshift is BRUTAL.
Youngsters are 2x faster than you and precise.
I'm not from USA tho.
I was SHOCKED that I was the worst at flipping the burgers at McDonald's. Pace is CRAZY and stress is NOTHING in comparison to let's say dropping production database or shipping 2 months late in startup.
Shit just looks easy, but noise, speed, temp and pressure (constant KPI over your head) is CRAAAAAZY.
Got kicked out after 3 months :| Got new job at tech support
AI is taking jobs faster than making new ones!
No field is safe and trying to switch careers over 40 is almost impossible. Even flipping burgers is nearly impossible (very hard to do without pior experience at such age).