I recently read the book Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang, a semi-biographical comic depiction of Yang's time with a high school basketball team while he was teaching at their school, and while it's a phenomenal read on its own, it actually shows Yang getting the offer to join the Superman books and his deciding to leave his 17-year teacher career to work in comics full time.
There's a panel where he depicts Superman fighting Luthor and compares two players on the basketball team to Superman and Batman as the World's Finest Team.
It actually shows his reaction to being told about "Truth," to where he's told about the secret identity getting outed and he's excited to explore what Luthor and Brainiac do about it...only for DC to tell them how they're planning to tell stories about "what if Superman is betrayed by Jimmy Olsen? Or even better - Lois Lane?" and he's immediately deflated at the prospect of writing a Superman that's not Superman.
He mentions Greg Pak as helping talk him into writing the book. In Pak's words "there's a core to the character that won't ever change. No matter what happens, Superman stays Superman."
Yang also says he was much happier with his work on New Super-Man compared to his prior run.