Asking because last time I looked the FBSD stuff wasn't "really there". This would seem to still be the situation: "a true (albeit limited) ABI implementation is provided."
The only reason everything doesn't end up commoditised is because they're protected in some way. Like, Facebook having all the people, or patents. If not, it's a race to the bottom every time.
You've not burned out, you've matured as a programmer. You can see all the crap for what it is so now try and make a difference...
Champion the cause of code that's legible - and that doesn't mean covering it in syntactic sugar. Legible code makes it damnobvious what it does and how it does it. Sometime find the "power take off" for a tractor ... that's what you're trying to do.
You can also champion the cause of not fixing that which is broken. There is also fun to be had demonstrating the technical debt is real debt and it does need to be paid back.
Much fun introducing peer review, too.
Get yourself, your team or whatever to sit next to your damn customer. Have them look at what you're doing at least once a day so they can say "oh, no, not like that" before it turns into a $100k fuckup.
So, yeah, you've just got through to the next level. It's not the software that's the challenge, it's the people.
I've just moved into a truly open office for the first time. I hate it so much - even a little privacy helps. I'm a big fan of chest height walls onto the 'public' areas then those table tennis height things between people. But I do not like feeling that every man and his dog is watching me all the time.
Oh god, really. It's not that hard. If you're into it and enjoy learning about it, then your head just fills up. It's like moving to a new town and getting used to the place.
Let's take "since the key is physically burned in"... You don't need to burn it in, it could easily be stored in a few bytes of on-die sram. As for the assertion that a de-powered chip can't wipe itself? You can just go out and buy a self wiping chip ... you don't need to be either Apple or the NSA, just have a credit card.
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?linux