This is the rub right here. Huge mental overhead that is often not mentioned.
Not only the potential for great consequence (think errant deployment in AWS S3 that takes out an entire region and costs the company millions), but the requirement to constantly be evolving and learning new things. Not only learning but being proficient at them. All while not forgetting the original stuff you knew.
> the requirement to constantly be evolving and learning new things.
when is this not the case?
there are no fields that pay well where stagnation is acceptable. not in (real) engineering, not in the sciences, not in legal, business, marketing, etc.
If a C programmer forgets a break statement, the entire western half of the US loses phone connectivity for several hours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665023