Great Article! This sounds a lot like my journey. Software developer in large companies for 18 years, got burned out and got into the wine industry and started a winery on the west coast. Ran into the Great Recession buzzsaw and had to shut it all down about 8 years after starting it. My wife was still working full time but we need the income so I went back to community college and took a few classes in something called BI (business intelligence) in 2011. Got hired shortly after and back doing IT work again. Do I like it? Not really? Does it pay really well? Yes. Keeping up with changes in software engineering and other things like data science is a constant struggle. I do not recommend anyone go into it long term because you will burn out or not be able to keep up as you get older.