Since I started this blog, readers have written in with all kinds of questions. Today I am sharing one of them. Some background details have been adjusted to protect his privacy. Here is his background and his questions.
The Reader’s Letter
Hi Brian,
I have been following your blog for a while, hoping that I might also get the chance to change careers and work abroad. I have some questions about switching careers and would love to hear your opinion.
I graduated from one of Taiwan’s top four science and engineering graduate schools, and I have worked at a semiconductor company for over five years. In those five years, most of my work has been SOP tasks: process troubleshooting, chart monitoring, and so on. About 80 percent of the work follows the SOP, and only the remaining 20 percent, when we need to improve yield or cut costs, leaves any room for discussion. As long as you follow the SOP, honestly anyone could do this job.
I joined the tech industry with ambitions, but in five years I have not realized my personal value or used what I studied. The high pay (over a million NT dollars a year) is all bought with overtime: about two extra hours a day, 50 to 60 hours a month, plus rotating holiday shifts. After work, I have roughly three free hours a day left.
Semiconductor work is very specialized. I worry that if I stay another 10 or 20 years and then want out, I will have been typecast in this industry for too long and face a midlife unemployment crisis. So I want to quit, learn to code, and become a software engineer. Software engineers have broader options, every industry will need them as technology develops, and salaries abroad are higher than in Taiwan. If I get the chance, I would still like to develop my career overseas.
My current plan is to study in Canada: a two-year college diploma (tuition in Canada is much cheaper than in the US), then a three-year work permit after graduation to stay and work in Canada. The program I have my eye on is interactive media design.
That program covers front-end and back-end programming as well as media design techniques. Besides programming, I am also very interested in design. I was in art classes in elementary and middle school, so I have some basic sense of aesthetics and design, and I have used Photoshop to make posters. If I can learn both programming and design, I think it could add points to my future career. My goal is to find a job as a UI/UX designer.
Right now I am teaching myself HTML and CSS basics after work, preparing for studying abroad next year.
UI/UX designer does not seem to be a well-known job title in Taiwan, but I hear it has been around overseas for a while. It combines coding with design aesthetics, which really appeals to me. I only learned this job title exists because a friend mentioned it recently. After graduating I might work in Canada first, but I would also like to understand this role in the US and Canada better. Here are my questions:
- In the US and Canada, is UI/UX designer a popular job that is easy to find work in and has good prospects?
- In your own work, do you sometimes work with UI/UX designers?
- If I am in my 30s and go study for two years in Canada before job hunting, will my age make it hard to find work after graduation? I am really worried about job hunting at an older age.
- Are there many people changing careers at an older age in US and Canadian companies?
- Is going back to college in my 30s a bit too late?
My Reply
Thank you for writing in and describing so many details. Many of your questions resemble what past readers have asked, so I picked your letter as the example to answer a batch of similar questions together.
After reading your letter, here is my summary of the key points:
- Graduated from a top-four science and engineering graduate school in Taiwan and joined the semiconductor industry. No room to use his expertise; most of the work follows set patterns, and the sense of achievement is low.
- Overtime on weekdays and weekends; very limited free time.
- Worried about midlife unemployment because no expertise is accumulating.
- Wants to switch into software engineering, and salaries abroad are higher, so he wants to develop overseas.
- The path: study in Canada, where tuition is lower than in the US and the work visa is more predictable.
- He wants to study interactive media design: front-end and back-end programming plus media design techniques.
- Current preparation: teaching himself HTML and CSS after work.
- Concerns: the prospects of UI/UX design, and all kinds of worries about age.
I have never held a full-time job in Taiwan (only a research assistant position at school), so I do not know the Taiwanese semiconductor industry well. But I genuinely sympathize with what you describe. All of us want a sense of achievement from our work. Working to a fixed pattern, unable to accumulate expertise, with overtime eating into your personal time, really does make it hard to see a future.
But between your current state and becoming a software engineer, there are a few things worth thinking through. First, you graduated from one of Taiwan’s top four science and engineering graduate schools. Have you considered work that would truly use your expertise? Among your seniors, juniors, and classmates, there must be people working somewhere their expertise actually matters. Giving up your field entirely to start over in a brand-new one means giving up the advantage you have spent years accumulating.
Second, you mentioned the high pay, over a million NT dollars a year. I wonder whether the reason you have not looked for work that uses your expertise is that those jobs cannot reach that salary level. If the semiconductor industry is not your ideal environment, could another field be?
(2026 note: Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has been competing hard for talent in recent years. In 2026, TSMC alone is hiring about 8,000 people in Taiwan, and the average total annual pay for a new hire with a master’s degree is around NT$2.2 million. The question I asked back then, whether there is work that uses your expertise without giving up the salary, is even more worth asking first in today’s market.)
Of course, the whole world is short of good software engineers right now. If you have done your homework and are sure this is your interest, or the career you want to pursue, then we can talk about how to switch into software engineering. (2026 note: That sentence was written in 2019, when the whole world was competing for software engineers. The situation has reversed by 2026. Entry-level engineering hiring has fallen sharply, by roughly 65 percent compared with 2019, employment for young developers aged 22 to 25 has contracted noticeably, and demand is concentrated on experienced engineers.)
About studying interactive media design in a two-year program in Canada and wanting a UI/UX designer job: I cannot follow that part of the logic. You said interactive media design covers front-end and back-end programming and also teaches media design techniques. To me, that sounds like learning a little of everything, without going deep into any of it. And going from software engineer to UI/UX designer: a designer is a designer, a different job from a software engineer. I am not sure where that switch comes from. You may need to research carefully whether you want to become a software engineer or a designer. The two are quite different.
Important 2026 note (the Canadian post-graduation work permit): Your plan was to study for two years at a college and then get a three-year work permit. The framework is still there: graduates of programs of two years or longer can still receive a PGWP of up to three years. But the rules changed in November 2024. For graduates of non-degree programs like college diplomas, your field of study must now be on IRCC’s list of eligible fields (identified by CIP codes), and you must meet a language benchmark of CLB 5, to qualify for the work permit. IRCC has also announced that the eligible list is frozen for 2026, at 1,107 programs. So before you choose a school, make sure the program you want is on the eligible list. If it is not, you will not get the work permit after graduation, and the whole plan falls apart.
Let me assume you also want to become a software engineer the mid-career way, like I did. Besides studying abroad, have you considered doing it in Taiwan? Studying abroad means facing language, culture, and life challenges all at once. Of course, studying abroad also brings many different rewards. But facing one challenge at a time in Taiwan (the career switch) has to be simpler than dealing with everything at once overseas, does it not?
I attended a coding bootcamp in the US myself (see my post “Coding Bootcamp”). I hear there are many programming classes in Taiwan now too (does anyone know good ones? Or does everyone go to the Institute for Information Industry?). Compared with studying abroad, switching careers in Taiwan should cost much less. I also recommend the programming mentorship program run by Hu Li, a highly skilled engineer I admire (the third cohort’s application guide). He has run this program for years, guiding students step by step into front-end or back-end web engineering roles. If you truly commit to it, I believe you can make the switch too. And once you have switched, there are still many ways to work in the US (see my post “How to Get a Tech Job in the US”). (Note: the link is to the 2019 third-cohort application guide. Check his current announcements for the latest cohort and fees.)
Honestly, I do not want to answer the question of whether UI/UX designer is a popular job with good prospects. I am not a designer, and I am not sure about the state of that field. More importantly, I do not want a few examples I have seen or heard to become the basis of a major life decision for you. The better approach is to research the demand for this job yourself. If you do not know how to look, you can refer to my earlier job-hunting post, “Job Hunting Platforms in the US.”
(2026 note: Since I asked him to check back then, here is the current picture as a starting point. Demand for senior designers in the US is still there, but the bar and the competition at the entry level have risen sharply, and job titles have gradually shifted from UI/UX designer to product designer. The numbers will keep changing; the way to check them does not. Please still draw your own conclusion from the latest data.)
The questions about studying and switching careers at an older age are similar. I do not want a few examples I have seen to become the basis of your decision either. I have seen people switch careers in their 30s. Resumes in the US do not list your age, but at the same time, the average employee age at many tech companies is around 30 (see Business Insider’s 2017 chart). Your future coworkers or manager may well be a full generation younger than you.
Setting external factors aside: whatever you do, in two years you will be two years older. I think the point is that you should gather good information, analyze your own situation, and make a decision you will not regret.
There is an English saying: “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I know readers of my blog may all hope to work in Silicon Valley or the US, but I do not want to blindly encourage everyone to copy my mid-career switch. Everyone’s experience is unique and hard to replicate. I hope you find your own path in life. If your research shows UI/UX designer openings are fewer than engineering openings, but you truly love it and put in the effort, I believe you are more likely to succeed there than in a field with more openings but no passion from you.
This got long without directly answering your questions. What I wanted to share is this: analyze your own situation, and look for different solutions to reach a goal under your current circumstances. Is there an easier way to get to the same goal? Also, believing everything you read is worse than reading nothing. Your own life choices need you to research and verify from many angles. I wish you the best in finding your next direction in life.
P.S. My dear wife answered a similar reader question before. You can take a look: “Engineers vs. Designers: How to Choose Without Regrets” (in Chinese).
P.S.S. The job-matching idea I was thinking about back then later grew into the referral mutual-help network I run today. If you are interested in tech jobs mainly in Silicon Valley, but also in cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, take a look at ReferHero.
This post was originally published on my old blog (August 17, 2019). The site is now offline, and the full text is preserved by the Wayback Machine. It was lightly edited when moved here, with notes added to reflect the situation in 2026.
