I was lucky to figure this out before it was too late. I was studying for CS masters and worked as a software developer for ten or so years from quite a young a

I was lucky to figure this out before it was too late. I was studying for CS masters and worked as a software developer for ten or so years from quite a young age and started noticing I hate most of it, and it was just getting worse. I love programming, but vast majority of software development isn't programming even if you work as a "programmer". It's a constant bureaucatic fight with piles of horrible codebases and technologies and bad ideas (that aren't even yours). I switched to academia and now I actually get paid to program. Not ridiculously like most white collars, but still unreasonably. And I don't have to turn into a badly fitting mindless cog for the prime hours of my life.