I left my six-figure tech career for the ambulance service
Joshua Silver was comfortable in a successful IT job - but in his forties he had a major rethink, saw his pay plummet and found himself fulfilled at last
In the world of IT and product management, Joshua Silver was a very successful man. He was in senior leadership teams, earning nearly six figures and well respected. The problem was that he was unfulfilled, and the salary didn’t equate to happiness.
In his forties, after being made redundant, he decided to not go back into the same sector despite decades of experience and a guaranteed high income. “I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “I had a real crisis, I was good at my job, I was the go-to guy to solve problems but always, in the back of my mind, I didn’t feel I got finance. There was a latent dissatisfaction that really hit me.”
There were two issues Joshua, now 49, was confronted with. He was middle-aged and only had experience in a career he no longer wanted. Luckily, he had his redundancy pay, which was “decent”, his mortgage is mostly paid off, and his two adult children live away from home. Still, after earning a good wage for a long time, he was concerned about finances. “I’ve always worried about money. I’ve never felt like I’ve had enough even when I was well paid. The thought of doing things that didn’t pay the same was hugely difficult.”
In ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.
The job he settled on now pays him a third of what he once got. Silver is currently on an apprenticeship scheme to become an assistant ambulance practitioner (AAP) for London Ambulance Service (LAS).
“The idea came when I was driving home one day and I saw a bunch of paramedics and ambulance staff standing on the corner of Northwick Park. My daughter, who had been working as a nurse, told me about her friend from college who had changed career to become an AAP. I had one conversation with her, she sold the role well, and my life fell into place.”
Joshua switched his senior role for an entry level one at the age of 48, with a salary just over £31,000. The training was “intense” with two months in a clinical setting and a month driving. “You’re crammed full of information, from medical conditions to trauma. You have no more than about two hours on any particular topic,” he says.
On top of that knowledge shift came the 12-hour days and nights he was expected to work. He has a pattern of four days working – two days, a late (2.30pm to 2.30am), and a night – then five days off. The long hours are what he found most daunting.
“One of the things you notice when you find work you love is that you get into a state of flow and time goes quickly. I don’t think about time at all at work, I don’t even notice it,” Joshua says. “I just slotted into place here. The majority of people who work for the service are amazing, caring people who are doing a tough job.”
When attending scenes and answering calls, Joshua is always accompanied by somebody with more clinical training, but sometimes he’s pushed out of his comfort zone and asked to take the lead. “The hardest job I’ve ever been to is a house fire at night. House fires are deadly, it’s a scene you don’t want to see too often. I’ve always gone in with the attitude that I’m going to see some stuff that other people don’t and it’s not going to be pretty or nice. It’s definitely been the most gruesome.”
Despite the difficult days, Joshua says he carries less home from work now than he ever did in IT. “There was always a project and something on tomorrow in the back of my mind before. There was all this talk about pressure about deadlines and stress, and I was certainly more stressed in IT.”
Joshua now works 12-hour shifts as part of the ambulance crew but feels he has more balance than ever
The jobs that stay in his mind are “the ones where people die on scene or before the ambulance gets back”. But he always tries to tell himself one thing: he’s there to help as much as possible and that’s what he does.
This is the first career that Joshua has chosen for himself. His work within the IT world was an accident. After two years studying physics at the University of Southampton he decided to drop out to earn money. It started with data entry for a small company on his own, and then after a few years of sitting next to the IT guys he found himself advising them, and eventually becoming a product manager. It was always in the back of his mind to go back to study. “I was weighing up the money, freedom, and doing what I like on one hand, and being an impoverished student on the other,” he says. “I never returned to Southampton.”
Read Next
He had multiple jobs in that field, one of his last at an information software vendor. “When I left, I knew I had to get out of finance. I wanted to do something different but I really didn’t have a clue how to work out what that was. When talking to job agents, they focus on what you have done before and I had no way of articulating what I wanted to do instead,” he says.
He joined Careershifters, a UK-based company that helps professionals stuck in unfulfilling jobs transition into new work, and entered a period of discovery, looking at different career options and asking himself three questions: “Would I enjoy this? Is this meaningful to me? Does it have the potential to earn me money?” He was hopeful to know that he wasn’t the only person in their forties who was unhappy with their work choices: “It showed that there was a lot of people in that dissatisfied space with no idea how to get out.”
In fact, according to a 2023 poll by Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, a third of 45-54 year olds are expecting to change their career before they retire, and only a third of young adults are expecting to have a single career for life.
The ambulance role aligns with a lingering idea he always had: to open a care home. Joshua’s younger brother had Down syndrome, so he had some experience. The home he had always planned to open was for the elderly, but during his period of unemployment he cared for two young men, both a similar age to what his sibling would have been. He found his “heart lift” when he saw them: “I would go and get a welcome from this chap, similar to the exuberant welcome my brother used to give me when he was alive.”
This made him realise he needed a career that helped people.
Joshua needn’t have worried about being too old to career-pivot – during AAP training, he found he wasn’t the oldest in the room, and there were plenty of others changing paths in midlife.
Your next read
There have been perks he wasn’t expecting. “I feel I have a much better work-life balance. I don’t mind working at night, I actually enjoy it. There’s something about having the world to yourself at night. It’s also nice coming off a night shift on a Monday morning, and looking at all the people going to work while you’re going home.”
The finances haven’t been an issue, either. “The remarkable thing is most of us can live on a lot less than we think we can. The adjustment came with earning well to earning nothing [in redundancy for 15 months before taking on his caring roles], so doing a minimum wage job now doesn’t feel like an adjustment. Anything after nothing is better.”
Joshua is now more cautious with how he spends his money and has had to give up the type of holiday he used to go on, but the standard of living he has is still “good”, he says.
Now he is planning to finish his apprenticeship and continue his learning. He comes home feeling fulfilled, and not dreading the next day: “I always just wanted to do something I believed in.”
