Research is for the elite, while engineering can be also pursued by normies. It's not wise to pursue a research career if you aren't fascinated by the subject a

Research is for the elite, while engineering can be also pursued by normies. It's not wise to pursue a research career if you aren't fascinated by the subject and don't want to spend most of your time on it. If you want a not very demanding, but well paying job that allows for a decent work-life balance, then software engineering is indeed a better choice. Especially doing backend engineering in large, non-tech companies (banks, telecoms).