In the short term, it can feel that way.
But in the longer term, at least in the part of the industry I'm in, operations are the core thing. Everybody I know who has become good at building resilient and robust systems that survive contact with the real world has a lot of experience understanding and fixing broken systems. A lot of humility of seeing good plans go wrong, and good ideas turn into bad ideas. The best have all this experience and still deep optimism about what's possible, about what can be built next, and about being able to fix the problem this time.
> How do ops people thrive and grow as those who take care of the systems around us, without letting the systems consume us?
An excellent question. In my career, I've optimized for working with people I can trust, and people I know who care as much as I do. In the short term, that can be stressful, because people express caring in different ways that aren't always productive. In the long term, its all worth it. The times in my career (careers?) I've felt most burned out were when I worked with people who didn't care, who I couldn't trust to care, and so I ended up being the only person in the room who cared. That's exhausting.
> In what ways are the systems we maintain mirrors of ourselves?
Another excellent question.