It’s a tough situation, especially for non-PhD holders. Even with a PhD it’s possible for a researcher to enter a rough patch where a career change looks inevi

It’s a tough situation, especially for non-PhD holders. Even with a PhD it’s possible for a researcher to enter a rough patch where a career change looks inevitable. The last time I was unemployed I started sending out my résumé to various community colleges and universities to enter their part-time/adjunct lecturer pools (I have a masters), but unfortunately my lay-off period didn’t match well with the academic hiring period. I managed to get a few interviews for software engineering positions, but the algorithms-based interviewing bar is very high these days for a software engineering job, and admittedly my software engineering chops degraded due to spending years in research. Ultimately I ended up finding an AI residency program at a research lab, which is how I ended up at my current position, but it required switching research areas and taking a minor salary drop.