I posted previously on this sub about the sense of relief I felt turning in my resignation. I accepted a position at another shop yesterday for $81k with tons of upward progression baked in to the job itself, better benefits and less stress overall, plus the opportunity to jump on Swiss and mill-turns. It's a manufacturing engineer techician position that puts me much closer to my long term career goals. I hate that jumping shops tends to put you in a better place financially and in terms of career progression, but every time I have, I've ended up with much more compensation than what raises amount to.

I was a computer programmer previously, and Machining closely matches the employment trends, for better or worse. I felt that in programming the optimum move was to stay on top of emerging technology, learn as much as you possibly can about the stack you are working on, and be ready to jump to a new position at all times. Luckily (or not), there are a lot less machinists, while the programming market is flooded because of how hard "just learn to code" was pushed as career advise and how limitless the job opportunities seemed at one point. Now computer programmers are a dime a dozen, and most shops around me are hurting for people.

It's a good time to be a machinist, there are a lot of emerging technologies to differentiate yourself on and set your self up to be highly paid. Efficiency and productivity are rising rapidly. Hopefully the average shop catches on and starts paying in kind so that I can stop seeing sub-$20/hour postings on indeed for CAM programmers.