Agree 100% after nearly 15 years in IT as a professional and many years programming as a child I got out of IT the day the DBA googled the phrase "cartesian join" just after I mentioned it. I'm now a tradie after mentally taking my work home most nights and the personal time required to keep up to date with languages, algorithms, methodologies, different technologies and on and on and on I'm so glad I made the transition.
I'm so glad that now the only thing I take home are my dirty hands and the skills set that I now require gets better on every job instead of having to spend hours of my own time trying to keep afloat. Recruitment agencies and hr don't understand your code and the IT dept aren't going to review your code and spot the ways you handled the problems you encounter but as a tradie pictures of my work speak for themselves and anyone can understand whats going on.
I still love to code thou its in me those self-taught will understand.
"It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but the result's the same." - Mike Dennison