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!