[cybwraith]

I think a huge part of it is the move from desktop apps as a sold product, to disposable web/web-wrapped apps. This happened mostly over the past 10-15 years and while I'm older than OP, I noticed a similar drop in quality of life for programmers with certain values and motivations during this time. Scrum-style and "agile-in-name" processes really hammer it home and are practically designed to create burnout.

I would suggest getting into development for embedded systems. The jobs don't seem as numerous as in VC-fueled web/app start-up style development, but when your product is expected to function without the ability to update its firmware/software near-instantaneously as modern webapps do, I think it changes the style of development cycle pretty dramatically.