Ya I get the need but you miss the point - no, you can't pay me anymore to wade into that and own risk, beyond a consulting context with low skin in the game.
There is a wave of senior leads thinking like this, because the knife's edge of "enough risk to game it for pay" finally tilted too far, and the career has changed.
In terms of going home after work and not yelling at my kids and spouse due to work stress due to the 10th 0day in a week on my corporate VPN/my retail-facing app/my..., there's a real QoL issue to consider. Many outside of security consistently misunderstands the mental health/career satisfaction/pay triad.
"Consulting, if you're not a part of the solution there's money to be made prolonging the problem" - Despair.com :)
/i'm a consultant
(Edit: Word of warning though, my father was a bricklayer and he also screamed at his kids whenever he came home overworked. I'm not saying I know the answer here but every job has its "they don't pay me enough for this shit")
In a situation of triage, "owning risk" is off the table.
I see you haven't hired a tradesman in the USA lately...
Sure, my body would hate me for it, but as a plumber I could make about half what I make as a SWE and given the progressive tax structure and business write-offs I'd probably net a comparable salary.
The major benefit is that you can invest much more of your income into a SEP-IRA, which is a before-tax deduction. 25% of income or $75K, whichever is lower. That adds up.
But health insurance is a massive cost. Last time I ran the numbers, which admittedly was a while ago, my income as a self-employed consultant had to be much higher than my income as an employee in order to reach the same take-home amount.
I’m not a CPA and wasn’t interested in squeezing every dollar out of the system. I had a simple sole proprietor LLC. So there may be other tricks to pull. But the tax writeoffs are overrated, in my experience, other than the IRA. It’s not free money; for the most part, it’s a discount on purchases you wouldn’t otherwise be making, and a lot more hassle to boot.
Yeah, I typically charged double my salary rate. You have to pay for your own sick time and vacation time. I think that's generally baked in to the rate.
(Afterthought: Don't forget the time and cost of retraining. I don't doubt your statement that you'll make just as much but I doubt it'll be right off the bat)