Yeah, I worry about this a lot, honestly. Perhaps it's my biggest mental block for taking the plunge and changing careers into software. I'm a senior engineer,

Yeah, I worry about this a lot, honestly. Perhaps it's my biggest mental block for taking the plunge and changing careers into software. I'm a senior engineer, but doing something very niche that is only software-adjacent. There's definitely a very real feeling of being trapped. If I transition, it seems I would almost necessarily take a pay cut, even though I might enjoy the new work more. Possibly it would work out better financially in the long run, but it's very hard to get over that initial financial activation energy. The only saving grace is that software salaries are so ludicrous that if I do transition, the cut to joining at a junior level would probably not be too bad for me. I can only imagine what it's like for folks going the other direction.