I should probably have said in my question that I find most dev work pretty soul-crushing. My aim is to spend a couple more years making some money then leave for something else. If I must be a cog then so be it!
Well if you really do not care, what you use and what you develop, you could look into embedded programming. If you have gained some experience there (a lot of companies are willing to give a newcomer a go in this area, since developers are hard to find) you can make a lot more money than beeing just another Java dude. That means mostly MISRA C and sometimes Java as well.
