burned out, it was super high stress. multiple nights sleeping at my desk. waking up with cold sweats having nightmares about my positions. say a "good" trader gets 52% of their trades correct. that means you're wrong 48% of the time, even on the stuff you're high conviction, done a genuine amount of work on. (tbf not all shops do this, i was just in a large multimanager hedge fund that did work like that. ofc if you're at a quant shop this does not at all apply).

as a junior-to-mid level person in finance, most of us are doing some form of coding anyway. i was forced to progress from vba to python to haskell based on the shops i was at. i realized that i was both good at this, enjoyed it, and didnt enjoy the trading part. so i decided to switch into dev despite having no qualifications for it. doing a js bootcamp helped fill in the holes.

i'd say finance careers have a much higher ceiling for comp, my boss was pulling in 2m/yr at age 33ish, but he was both lucky and exceptional. i wasn't gonna be him. at my career trajectory (the vast majority of us in finance) i'd probably be more like 200-500k/yr. just kinda not worth it if i could go to tech and make somewhat less but with far better quality of life.