The music industry is much worse in my opinion. If you spend half your life learning to program so you can make games, you can always give up at 38 and start working on boring enterprise software.
If You're a 38-year-old self-taught musician you can't exactly walk into a company and get a job.
I still make music as one of my main hobbies, but I've accepted that no one will ever know who I am, and I'll never make a single cent. There's nothing in the world like making a song for your friends though.
That is precisely the story of a close friend. It really messed her up for several years. She was genuinely amazingly talented but her band never managed to be in the right place at the right time.
She did land on her feet, after literally going all the way back to college as a freshman. (She was fortunate to have the resources for that.)
Best anecdote though, on the 18 year olds who she befriended in the program: "The good news is they think I'm 28. The bad news is they think that's old."
There's plenty of "working musicians" not in the industry: playing gigs in jazz clubs, at weddings. If you're a composer or a songwriter, you can find work in films and TV and commercials (lots of ad agency work to go around), or become an in-house composer at a stock music house, or another production staff, like a game studio!
If You're a 38-year-old self-taught musician you can't exactly walk into a company and get a job.
I still make music as one of my main hobbies, but I've accepted that no one will ever know who I am, and I'll never make a single cent. There's nothing in the world like making a song for your friends though.