The title is the question, and I wanted to probe the community a bit on this.
I have been a software engineer in some capacity for the last 15 years. I started as a glorified WordPress administrator, moved to backend development, then ended up in the cloud spending my days fighting with Kubernetes, AWS, and CI/CD pipelines that would sicken Rube Goldberg. The things I did all day became so far detached from what originally got me interested in computers, and I voluntarily made myself unemployed to save my mental health. With the benefit of time and hindsight, I'm not entirely convinced that I want to return to software at all.
I suspect that, if you are the sort of person who was burned out by the cloud, you know exactly where I'm coming from, how I feel, and why I made the choice that I made. We would probably have much to discuss if we ever crossed paths at a bar.
So my question: If you have burned out on cloud development or a similar field and abandoned that path entirely, what did you end up switching to? I would be even more interested in hearing cases where you moved to an entire different industry or discipline.
Thanks!
Just tell everyone you are an "AI Developer" or "AI Engineer" and get more money and do little to no work.