There are plenty of good answers here. There just really isn't anything out there that is remotely close to SWE in terms of comfort, pay, and accessibility.
For the last decade or so, SWE has been one of the most accessible and lucrative professions that mankind has ever seen. Before that, most folks needed to go the finance/lawyer/doctor route to access similar levels of financial security. And those professions require significantly more trade offs than SWE (more training, worse work life balance, etc...)
The fact is, you are not going to make SWE level salary doing hobby level woodworking in your garage. You can get into the trades and with a fair amount of time and effort you might be able to pull in the equivalent of a junior level SWE salary. But the trades are rough on your body and you will pay for that later. Or you can try and transition to other types of white collar work, most of which will never come close to what a SWE gets paid.
And of course, these answers are pretty personal. I have a few too many hobbies and would be more than happy to spend a few years making not very much money trying to turn some of those into paying gigs, but I also have a wife who has a well established career and we have kept our expenses in check. If you are the sole bread winner and sitting on an expensive mortgage and sending your kids to pricey private schools, then your options are going to be much more limited.
Also, just to keep this conversation a bit more productive. I would recommend looking into jobs that are software related (or software adjacent) in interesting fields. i.e. construction, energy, biotech, government labs, etc... You will almost certainly take a pay cut, and you will still get some of the typical SWE BS, but it is much less pronounced in my experience.
For the last decade or so, SWE has been one of the most accessible and lucrative professions that mankind has ever seen. Before that, most folks needed to go the finance/lawyer/doctor route to access similar levels of financial security. And those professions require significantly more trade offs than SWE (more training, worse work life balance, etc...)
The fact is, you are not going to make SWE level salary doing hobby level woodworking in your garage. You can get into the trades and with a fair amount of time and effort you might be able to pull in the equivalent of a junior level SWE salary. But the trades are rough on your body and you will pay for that later. Or you can try and transition to other types of white collar work, most of which will never come close to what a SWE gets paid.
And of course, these answers are pretty personal. I have a few too many hobbies and would be more than happy to spend a few years making not very much money trying to turn some of those into paying gigs, but I also have a wife who has a well established career and we have kept our expenses in check. If you are the sole bread winner and sitting on an expensive mortgage and sending your kids to pricey private schools, then your options are going to be much more limited.
Also, just to keep this conversation a bit more productive. I would recommend looking into jobs that are software related (or software adjacent) in interesting fields. i.e. construction, energy, biotech, government labs, etc... You will almost certainly take a pay cut, and you will still get some of the typical SWE BS, but it is much less pronounced in my experience.