Coming to Wellington for a fresh start but might be too optimistic?
I am a 40 year old male who has recently gone through a mid-life crisis that I am coming out on the other end of and currently living with family in Taupo which is of course a temporary arrangement. I have visited Wellington for a week to see if its a place that I vibe with, and I loved my time there and quite set on it, planning to move around August/September. I don't have much savings, 10k-20k + kiwisaver, and with the current job market I can only look at a move with blind ambition for so long before real doubt sets in. This coupled with wanting to do a career change is very risky.
I used to work as a CAD draughtsman in Manufacturing/Engineering applications in my 20s/30s, and recently have had an extended time without a job which I have used to reground myself and learn to program using books and have a lot of personal projects that I can add to a portfolio including a small game engine in C++, an LED night light that I designed and 3d printed, wrote firmware for, marketed and sold a small run of. I have worked with computers my whole life and am a quick learner adapt in many self-applied disciplines, like self learning how to design circuit boards. I have built arcade cabinets, love interactive experiences, and that's why I have moved to software development because I am passionate about combining my hard/software knowledge together.
Anyways, the problem is that with mass layoffs happening in big companies due to AI and the job market being really hard. All I have is things that I can add to a portfolio, move to a busy city like Wellington that has a tech sector/game development scene, and treat it like a struggling actor moving to Hollywood. Trying to have that fake it till you make it mentality but also making sure I have some sort of backup plan. Massive doubt has set in with everyone saying how tough it is out there, especially in Wellington, and I don't mind doing many small jobs doing whatever to get me by so I can slowly make connections and find my tribe.
I hope that we see a course correction with AI, as I have gone through the motions of using it for some coding projects myself, giving me again the self-taught knowledge to say that I have competence using it, but then ultimately deciding that it's not good for early stage software projects, only mockups, and that I was not learning anything by not doing the work. I removed my subscriptions to go back to normal development and hope that with so many laid off software dev's there can be some movement or community driven events that I can involve myself in. Or one day there is a sudden huge need for developers to fix the issues that AI creates. Either way, I want to be at the right place at the right time for when opportunity comes.
Am I lost in delusion with my situation? Am I stuck in a bubble of thinking? I want to please hear from the people in Wellington that are closer to the reality of it all. I don't want to live in luxury, just get by and knock boots with others of my own self making.