I programmed as a teenager and through university but didn't find it as enjoyable as Linux. My first job was as a sysadmin. I then chose a career path to DevOp

I programmed as a teenager and through university but didn't find it as enjoyable as Linux. My first job was as a sysadmin. I then chose a career path to DevOps then Platform Engineering. Finding people who have a depth of Linux and systems skills but can code is like hens teeth. Companies will pay a premium over Devs for that intersection of very niche skills. As well, Platform teams are often smaller and bypass some of the processes like having product owners, unnecessary agile rituals and are far more empowered than many Devs are who often work to already designed/scoped/architected tickets which while understandable from a business point of view takes much of the fun out of the job. As Platform all Devs teams are our (internal) customers so we talk to all of the dev teams, some of which don't talk to each other, so we get to see a more complete picture of the engineering org and because of that we are brought into architectural discussions and lots of open-ended fun engineering problems. Sysadmin is (like QA) sadly a rather disrespected (almost janitorial) title now. Don't fight a battle you can't win - but you don't need to jump all the way to Dev to do it.