Mine wasn't necessarily a career change, but I went back to a former career.
For 6 years, I was an Incident Manager at Yahoo. Well someone got the bright idea to replace the entire incident management department with AI. I was laid off in August 2024. I had spent 6 months applying, in interviews, with nothing happening.
My wife owns a literacy center for children and adults who fit the Dyslexia profile. Her office manger and services coordinator got together, and went to my wife claiming each of their jobs should be full time, and with a very high hourly rate. When my wife said she didn't agree with them, they both gave their resignations on the same day, with her office manager only giving a 4 day notice. So my wife walks in my home office and says "Do you want a job?"
I was an office manager for a food distribution company and a couple of construction companies when I lived in California. I said sure. She combined both roles into one. We get along fabulously as her as my boss. The company has tripled its revenue from this time last year. We have over 25 families on a waiting list, where before my wife's longest waiting list was 10 families. I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing. The only downside is when I want to take a day off, there's no PTO so I have to make up the hours, which my wife is totally fine with me doing.