> 2. Mental health is often overlooked in these discussions. The pandemic has been a huge source of stress, uncertainty, and general chaos. Many people (myself included) lost their usual outlets of stress (going out, meeting with friends, catching up with family, etc). From personal experience, this lead me to having a spat of time where I was burned out and had to lay off working at all for several months before joining a new organization. From what I hear, I'm far from the only one who's gone through such an experience.

Yeah, this is super evident in my circle of friends and colleagues. One senior-dev friend started an apprenticeship as a carpenter, another one opened a store for booze. Some others got serious about following their passion projects. Everyone seems to have a little crack or two.