[gumby]

> Incoming hot take: Don't become a professional systems developer. Do it as a hobby. If the goal is to optimize for $$$ earned over one's career

Deep systems programmers get paid a lot. I'm sure there are other jobs that pay more, but if you make enough and like what you do, you should do what you like.

Also higher up the abstraction chain you go, the more froth their it (I'm mainly thinking of frameworks, but this is true more generally) so you have to pay a lot of attention to what's going on. While the deeper you go down the stack the slower the slewing rate and the more time you have to understand the domain more deeply. Which, to go back to your "$$$" position, acts as a moat.