What jobs are as high-paying and comfortable as a software developer?

If you want a relatively high paying job, I recommend working at a FANG. Depending on the team you’re on, you’ll get to work on some hard problems at massive scale. It’s a great opportunity to learn. Note: this is not true on every team.

The trade off is that these jobs often come with immense stress and a lack of work life balance.

I took the FANG route and even bounced around big tech companies to get bigger pay increases. Financially it worked out extremely well, but emotionally I had to figure out how to deal with constant stress, anxiety, and at some level my job became a significant part of my identity.

There are other high paying career paths but most are parallel to software or worse for the same level of seniority and effort.

To make fundamentally more money, go work at FAANG. To make more than that, become a high paid consultant.

Write a hit novel or song? Real estate you can do pretty well. Or other forms of sales. Those are the ones that pop to mind that don’t require serious specialized education or licensure.

Other forms of engineering - civil, etc. but that will require a degree. Economics - same deal. Lawyering. But that will require a JD and working your way up the ladder.

Nursing is probably not something you’d consider comfortable but can be very lucrative, especially travel nursing or becoming an NP. But will require you to lift a finger.

If you have the capital - become a landlord.

window cleaning. in both software dev & window cleaning you basically just sit there :) I heard they make roughly similar salary, perhaps like junior or so, at least where I'm at.

but on a serious note - own a business.

the thing is for software the bar for entry is fairly low while the pay is sufficiently good considering you don't own the business. like you could make millions off a pizzeria chain but you gotta start from square one. you could start your own law firm but you gotta go to law school usually followed by years in the field. or you could start your own e-commerce store selling rubber duckies. sky's the limit when it comes to owning a business.

p.s. look at skyline robotics, they seemed to crack the window cleaning business.