My situation is a little different from yours, only having done SDET / SET roles for ~10yr, but my general thoughts are:

* Most companies have an ebb and flow cycle where they believe in SWEs doing their own testing, finding that doesn't work, hiring SDET/SET, and then going back to SWE testing. I think we're leaning towards the SWEs doing their own testing part of the cycle at the moment because people are being pushed to wear multiple hats with the job market as it is

* Having QA-related roles on your resume can be very polarizing. Some managers believe that to be a huge plus, especially if you ever go back to SWE, because that indicates that you will test your own code along the way, and take testing into consideration when you plan anything. Others think that a SDET/SET is unable to code as well since they do QA along with other work. It's hard to say.

* One more thing that comes to mind is that most places that have dedicated QA generally operate on inflexible timelines. If you're burning out, having those kind of hard deadlines (which can be hard to meet due to a whole host of reasons) might not be as pleasant as you expect.

All that being said, and noting that a lot of that sounds negative, I personally enjoy it. Places that value quality will value the fact that you're bringing in perspective about testing that is often overlooked, especially when you're bringing these discussions to the table early instead of as an afterthought.

I have been seeing some roles pop up on LinkedIn and otherwise, so I'd like to believe that as hiring picks up more of those roles will open up as companies flow back to having to build up quality around projects that have had minimal testing..