I’ve spent most of my decades in SWE in large organisations, working with passionate people. So you definitely can do that. There is no recipe that I can share with you other than to not stay in jobs that you don’t want if you don’t have too. Oh, and don’t be afraid to take a little pay cut, as long as you’re going from well paid to well paid. I don’t buy the fact that you can’t be passionate and still clock-out however. People with children should frankly always do this, at least until you can somehow involve your children in the joy of making the machine go boop. Anyone should clock-out really, if you’re doing work on your own time you’re doing work for free. I know this is an area where European and American mindsets tend to clash, but unless you really, really, really, really, love React then why on earth would you be fiddling with it on your own time? Anyway, I think it’s usually up to you to find a good place to work. It hasn’t been hard for me, and SWE being as in-demand as we are in my area has definitely helped, but you still need to make the moves when your current place becomes a bad fit.
That being said, I think it’s perfectly fine to find a nice well paid job and just work it and then live your life on the side. In my experience people who don’t really care about CS on their own time can be just as excellent as co-workers as people who nerd away.
It is the corporate environments and the entanglement of Business BS that ruins software work for me.
You can work with passionate people. You can work for a large corporate, for a huge paycheck and stock options. Pick one.
I work for a small company, and I make a great living, but it's a fraction of a fang salary, and there is no stock to option.
On the upside I'm responsible for my code base, I work on whatever I like, (which largely overlaps with customer needs since I like getting paid.) I rarely have a zoom meeting [1], I have in-person catch-up with colleagues once a month, usually at a restaurant over a meal.
The rest of the time we gave informal chat, we push the boundaries of the possible, we experiment, try out big ideas,and generally it's still enough fun to get me out I bed in the morning.
[1] I have a few corporate customers. They exist to remind me why I don't work for a corporate. We have a weekly zoom catchup meeting. Their two lead programmers go from meeting to meeting. Its hilarious and I mock them ceaselessly for it.
But they get paid a lot more than I do, and frankly they're welcome to it.
And clearly I'm not living in San Francisco ;)