I graduated my CS master. I like programming but don’t love it. I get a bit scared to think about that I have to do it for 8 hours per day like I am doing now at a startup. The stress is insanely high and my performance is clearly affected when I sleep terrible (which I sometimes do) at this place. Also: the field of programming is either relatively easy but overbearing managers/stress (CRUD) or hard (Dijkstra’s algorithm) or insanely hard (instrumenting a binary programs and applying a symbolic execution on it and an SMT solver to crack a program — see https://github.com/JonathanSalwan/Triton).

Moreover, I think it is cognitively a tougher job to do than say UX design or marketing. These disciplines also interest me despite having almost no formal training in them from an educational institution (UX - 3 months, marketing - 2 months).

Relatively successful people that I know say a couple of things:

1. The bulls have raged there should be a.m. economic downturn within the next 5 years. If you get a good job now you’re fine, otherwise you aren’t.

2. Don’t job hop you are near 30 years old.

3. Specialize and work at one company for at least 3 years .

4. Don’t become an entrepreneur.

My question: what are your experiences in job hopping and gaining interdisciplinary skills? Is it worth it in hindsight?