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Below is the question:

How Can I Talk Myself Into A Career Change?

I've run into crossroads in my career life. After working hard, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and finding something that worked career-wise for me in software development, I still get pulled back into my passion of teaching music professionally. I think that's because the major reason why I pursued where I am now is because I needed purpose and I needed to make money. I had a new family and the most important thing at that time was to help provide for my family; and have more time with them. Now that my spouse and I are in a much better position, I'm finding myself wanting more for myself and can't stop thinking about completely changing my career path once again

If there is anything that Should be on topic, it should be this question. There are books on the subject, including "What color is your parachute" (which is the most famous) as well as a plethora of others.

The answers to this are not opinion based, as there are clear steps that can be taken, some of which I outlined in my answer. IMO, this question should not be put on hold.

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    One thing to keep in mind is that if it takes a book to answer, it's probably out of scope for a Q/A site (there is also a "too broad" close reason).
    – enderland
    Mar 4, 2016 at 13:51
  • It's not a big book, and the answers given to him were not broad. and as I've said, it's a topic many people face in this day in age. Including the Atari computer programmer who designed "ET" who later became a psychologist.
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Mar 4, 2016 at 14:02
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    ET was a massive flop with countless copies becoming landfill... just saying
    – Kilisi Mod
    Mar 13, 2016 at 7:52

2 Answers 2

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This wasn't the official close reason, but I think this is also worth pointing out. The fact that there are multiple books written on this topic tells you that it is too broad for the Stack Exchange format. To quote our Help Center:

too broad - if your question could be answered by an entire book, or has many valid answers, it's probably too broad for our format

There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow down the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

There are simply far too many possible answers to this question that will each by highly dependent on the person looking to switch careers. You say that there were clear steps you took, and while that worked for you, something entirely different could be the best answer for someone else.

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    Okay, I'm confused then. I'm going to open another question as to why some similar questions (or at least appear similar to me) are flagged and others are not. I'm trying to get a better understanding, as I'm getting tired of writing answers to questions that get killed
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Mar 4, 2016 at 15:38
  • @RichardU: I'm looking forward to that question.
    – Jim G.
    Mar 4, 2016 at 23:47
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The answers to this are not opinion based, as there are clear steps that can be taken, some of which I outlined in my answer. IMO, this question should not be put on hold.

Questions about career change have no real definitive answer, where one answer is better than another. That's the reason that Atwood and Spolsky decided from the beginning that these kinds of questions are off-topic on StackOverflow and that we have applied the same principle across the Stack Exchange sites.

We put questions on hold to give them a chance to get on-topic while stopping people from spending more time on an off-topic subject. If you can edit such a question to get it on-topic, we'll be happy to reopen it.

Otherwise, we'll likely delete it from the site.

Here's the question as finally stated on the post:

For those out there who have completely switched from one unrelated career path to another, how did you handle the deciding factors?

This is way too broad - there are far too many possible good answers for this, and all of them are quite subjective. This is a good question for quora, but not for a Stack Exchange site.

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  • Of COURSE there are definitive answers on how to change careers, with very specific steps to take. I learned a whole bunch when I went through vocational rehab. There is a very clear, step by step process of outreach, networking, filling education gaps, finding a mentor, and moving into the new career.
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Mar 4, 2016 at 14:07
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    I'm not convinced those are universal steps.
    – user29055
    Mar 4, 2016 at 16:30
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    @RichardU - if you already have the book with the definitive answers - why would you need to ask the question here? The answer would appear that you are looking for other opinions - which also appears to be the reason the question was put on hold.
    – Joe Strazzere
    Mar 5, 2016 at 18:57
  • Not my question, @JoeStrazzere
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Mar 7, 2016 at 13:10

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