The answer boils down to one concept: craft. Wikipedia entry of the word is rather narrow in definition. It’s been more than 10 years that software has been described as one. And it’s not a stretch of imagination to consider writing another. Stretch a little and you will see a crafty element in a wide array of human activities.
The crafty nature of software is in part why I’m switching.
In retrospect, this is a logical next step. Once, I aspired to be a cognitive psychology researcher. When it came to doing research, I chose for writing Python scripts for creating experiment materials and R to simulate participants. Instead of focusing on generating knowledge. And this kept going on like this, well into my current position: working as a data scientist.
The “data scientist” title still covers really wide ground. One way of grouping data scientists is whether the position is a central role or a supportive role. The supportive role is the one I know closely: You support a business in solving a problem, but you are not at the core of the problem solution. If you’re craving for craft, you need to stretch yourself quite frequently.
Ultimately, I would prefer less stretching and more craft.