I understand this sentiment. Software can still be a lucrative and fulfilling field to work in, though perhaps not as uniformly as back in some sort of day. Perhaps the motivators for starting a tech career are different today. I work in government data transparency, and my work directly affects (hopefully positively) the communities that use our product. The code part is fun, but wouldn't be sufficient to keep me there alone. Have I taken a financial hit for taking a social-impact track vs. something else? Without a doubt. It works for me, though, in a way that optimizing for "the engineering experience" would definitely not have.

If you're feeling burnt out but want/need to stay in coding, perhaps it is worthwhile to think about how much "fulfillment" you require from coding tasks. If you find you want to reduce it, could think about: * Mentoring other devs. It's very fulfilling to help someone grow. * Take a pay cut and work at a nonprofit/B-corp/mission-driven regular corp. There are tons of these. There are lists (i.e., climatescape) but ask around. * Traditional hobbies. Woodworking, painting, gardening, travel, music, etc. If you'd prefer to stay technical, some tech-adjacent hobbies with vibrant and exciting communities are retrocomputing (say, check out Adrian's Digital Basement on YouTube), cosplay/prop making (check out the Role Play Forum, there's some extremely knowledgeable people there), security capture-the-flag events, 3d printing... many choices. I feel we live in a hobby golden age - there's so many excellent online communities for seemingly every niche or mainstream hobby.