Anyone regret getting into the creative field? After 20 years working creative jobs, several layoffs, I started to envy those people who studied more "promising majors" having a good life at mid age.
Also noticed a lot of designers stay single after 40s, meaning no family. If they have family, they stopped at 1 child. Could be because of the nature of instability from creative jobs, or personal preference.

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I still love being in the creative field. My only regret is working for people and agencies who don’t really care about you and only are using you while paying you a lot less than what they are getting paid. I only wish I seen it sooner.

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I got my degree in visual communication - graphic design in 2009. I had an internship / job as a jr. designer at a small agency during my junior year of college and have been able to stay in the field for the last 17 years. Started off at design agencies in marketing / digital marketing / advertising design, shifted to product design (UX/UXR and UI/design systems). More recently I’ve shifted to being an AI design architect and am actively using and learning / managing how we leverage these tools in our processes for client delivery. It may very well be a bubble but it’s also a great time to learn because there’s room to influence and inform guidance / usage. My value is not in how beautiful or fast I can create high fidelity mockups / solutions, it’s in my strategy / creativity / business acumen so no I’m not scared by AI because I’ve never been just a pixel pusher.

My partner of 6.5 years also works in tech (he started as a programmer/engineer and now works as a technical program manager). We don’t have children as a choice and are happy but we do work a lot and have busy times of the year where we’re both swamped.
Live in Brooklyn, feel very fortunate but are aware that nothing lasts forever so we’ve also been pretty mindful about our investments and working towards retirement

likeuplifting

We have almost the same experience. I’m starting in advertising agency as a designer, and then move to a web design then UX/UI design, and now become design engineer, prompting AI and take care of the product from end to end.
I’m married with two kids I don’t have over hours work no one calling me on the weekend. my wife is also a web designer. She also have time during the weekend she worked for a digital studio, so it’s not as crazy as an agency. We even have time to do our own business sell digital art online and do a SaaS consultant on the side. Both of us bringing in $340k from our full-time job in about $100k extra from our business. I think design is not a bad career. I live a good life. 

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I have 4 kids and am the default parent for the most part. I took the route of a more corporate environment though, somewhere I could provide meaningful value, but in a less glamorous space. I feel like thats the biggest trade-off, but its way more stable... I hated working at an agency AND being a parent. Felt like those two roles were constantly at odds with each other. I do sometimes worry now, because I'm hitting a ceiling in my current role, but its near impossible to find anything out there right now. I've been looking for a year and half now with little luck...

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More and more every day. When I started, I thought my choice gave me some degree of stability and longevity. Now I'm not sure either are true.

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With AI I am starting to have regrets. I feel like my skills are very niche vs if I had gone the accounts side I have a lot more flex in other types of roles I could pursue

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What’s the range of the “creative field” here? My POV is biased towards creative roles within corporate environments, but I don’t see this at all.

Is this more for traditional print and freelance folks? Not trying to say your POV isn’t right, just want to understand better.

I meant people with Art and design degree.

I don't regret being creative, but hate most of the companies where I work. I can't dream of anything else to do but don't know what to pivot to.

I’m actually feeling the opposite. Very happy I am in the creative field and the choices I’ve made in my career. I look at many of my peers in tech and see the bottom following out for many of the developers right now. There is an absolute glut available and low need to hire.

Maybe I’ve been very fortunate but I also avoided the agency lifestyle as it didn’t respect work life balance. I landed at a tech startup and it’s been a very interesting but fulfilling ride.

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