My career path started in Ops, which evolved into SRE. I never did any formal training of any kind really. I'm entirely self taught. I feel confident in my skillset for the most part but I wonder if taking a backend/api development job might help me understand the world that I happen to find myself in a little more deeply. I've never had a dedicated development job so I don't think I really even understand what I'm missing by not doing it.

Has anyone else done this?

Also, it seems like developer jobs in general don't pay as well as SRE. Anyone have any thoughts on how can I weigh the value of the experience vs the lost wages?