I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers.

I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers.

Also when I started coding, it immediately felt like my passion. And the thing I love most about coding is that mostly all changes I make have instantly visible results. I couldn't imagine working a job where I had to plant a seed and then wait a week to see if it sprouts.

Also what I love about development is that with modern Docker/Kubernetes setups you can make the environment where your code runs pretty predictable. And with proper backups configured and backup restore testing you aren't really worried about losing the stuff you worked on for months. Meanwhile while farming you can't predict how much sun is gonna shine or how much rain you're gonna get. And you can't prepare for natural disasters which can come anytime and ruin your crops.

So I wonder if it's all just people who never loved software engineering and just went into it for money, and now that they have money after years of working they start looking for their true passion.