It seems our jobs are a double-edged sword. Unlike professionals like doctors, lawyers, and many accredited within their professions, we don't need degrees. I

It seems our jobs are a double-edged sword. Unlike professionals like doctors, lawyers, and many accredited within their professions, we don't need degrees. I certainly don't have a stem degree, and many of my friends, some of whom make a third to half a million dollars in the Northeast of the US (not SV), don't have any college degrees at all. We're able to learn and shift, going from developer to sysadmin, architect, manager or security professional and back again. Pre-sales anyone? We can choose relaxed, helpful-to-society non-profit companies, mean, 24/7 work ethic startups with monthly death marches, low-salary beer keg outfits with bright colored furniture, boring investment banks or many other. We have a sort of highly competitive meritocracy where I can go home and learn something I happen to know is hot in the market, and maybe climb the hierarchy (maybe). On the other hand, I'm pushing 40. That means events beyond my control are pushing me down the hierarchy, or at the very least making the ladder rungs more slippery. Would you take it all back and pick a different profession, if my assessment is balanced?