Menopause and technical job

[Bluemoon38]

Anyone else feeling like they have been demoted to junior position in a highly technical job due to menopausal brain fog and just total feelings of inadequacy when one felt competent? Really struggling with work atm as software engineer 53 and on hrt..working with much younger people and feeling old and redundant

I'm in a similarish role to you and yes a lot of colleagues are younger and fresher. The last few months were particularly difficult with the brain fog (I'm late 40s) and feeling utterly useless. I would get some basic information on a customer call, come off the call and not have a clue what was said. Try to do a basic task and find it completely beyond me. Traditional HRT didn't help with that though it was good for the hot flushes and insomnia. Anyway, testosterone has been very helpful and I am right back to feeling my old sharp self. It might be worth a try for you.

As we get older our advantage is more our crystallised intelligence, which is using the knowledge and skills built up over time, including greater emotional maturity (hopefully!) for example, teaching, or mentoring others, rather than fluid intelligence, which is more the problem-solving in the instant, which younger people tend to be faster at. Thinking about the difference between these two things helped me to think about how to pivot my work to more take advantage of the competencies that younger people are less likely to have yet.