what if they would be great doing something entirely different. OP hasn't said if they ever had a point in their life when they really enjoyed what they did. i

what if they would be great doing something entirely different. OP hasn't said if they ever had a point in their life when they really enjoyed what they did. in my case brain fog from burn-out lasted not months but 6-8 years with varying severity. depending on how long you stay burned out or ignore the burn-out that might be less. E.g if you're without a support network during burn-out it may not be as straight forward to pull yourself out. Burn out might be not because they worked so much and are now financially stable but because they had to work so much because they could never make ends meet until now. If they can afford it they should take time off radically - get rid of everything that ties them down, be in nature for min 6 months (example: a long hike -> heading from A to B so there is a purpose in the simplicity). Or cover yourself in books (not compsci or tech literature but something radically different) and spend the other free time physically exercising. There are pretty clear signs of depression in these sentences (why I would focus on lot of exercise or routines that also demand a healthy diet). Alternative is to see a quack and pop pills for the next few months and risk some addiction as a result, or at least deal with weaning yourself off them again. Doing radically different things than $dayjob means totally forgetting about technology for a while and opening yourself up to other things. Person is 28 ffs which is hardly an age where you can't start on a radically different career path and end up excelling in it. Worst thing would be to carry on as a dev and turn yourself from a bad dev to a mediocre one and pay for this poor "gain" with burn-out, brain-fog, depression for several years.