I started as a lawyer then switched to programming. Law is cushy in the sense that you work in a nice office. But the constant stress, endless "emergency" deadl

I started as a lawyer then switched to programming. Law is cushy in the sense that you work in a nice office. But the constant stress, endless "emergency" deadlines, missed anniversaries and celebrations, unreasonable clients, pressure to bill bill bill, then to earn earn earn... Then there's the work itself. I was in litigation, handling lawsuits between enormous corporations. The first few years of my career were spent in doc review 'dungeons', going through millions of pages of documents to find 'relevant' and 'hot' docs. Then as I became more senior, I was bombarded with one discovery motion after that were often filled with toxic attacks against the other side ("those bastards hid these documents! blah blah blah"). It didn't change much once I began doing 'substantial' work: litigation, by its nature, is intellectual combat. Being immersed in that kind of knife-fighting 24/7, week after week, wore me down. Now I'm a software engineer and I love it. Work is interesting, hours are humane, and I genuinely enjoy collaborating with my colleagues to build new things. Sure, I don't make as much as I did in law. But the evenings and weekends I can spend with my family, my mind at rest, are priceless. Plus, software engineers make plenty of money.