You don't need a degree to be a software developer. These days degrees are becoming somewhat meaningless in IT.
The issues you describe are common in larger organizations - finding budget for software developers is difficult and so they're often over-committed to 120-140%.
They do this intentionally. If you complete 120% of the work you should do in a 40 hour week, IT SHOWS YOU CAN COMPLETE THAT WORK. They'll then nudge you to 125% and see if you can do that too.
They'll keep doing it until you FAIL. You should set expectations as often as possible that you can't get something done reasonably. Don't worry about whether it is something you COULD do if you spent 60 hours - you didn't sign up for 60 hour weeks.
Figure out how much time you can devote to the job in a week without losing your mind, and push back as hard as you can (politely) that you can't get X task done before Y date.
Managers will try to manipulate you into caving. Do not back down, even if it means having to repeat yourself as if you're talking to a toddler that doesn't understand.
Just like system administrators and software developers are supposed to manipulate software and systems into performing their tasks as they want... Managers do the same to humans.
The same way you look at a computer and think "I wonder if I can overclock this computer for an extra 10% performance per clock", your manager looks at you and thinks "I wonder if I can overclock this nerd and get away with it".
They will keep pushing and pushing and pushing until you burn yourself out, and a critical skill is to push back, set boundaries, and define what you can and can't get done. This takes immense practice, but you'll find yourself with a much greater work life balance.
If they're instistant even after you've properly informed them that it can't be done, have no qualms about FAILING that project. Work the reasonable hours you can, and let it not work.
Your manager will then have a very real issue - They didn't devote the proper amount of resources to the task, which is their job. If they know something can't get done by a deadline, it is very much a responsibility of theirs to try to address it.
You won't get fired over not being able to work 70 hours in a week. From what I've seen, you need to very near try to get fired in some organizations, as an UNDER performing employee still prevents you from losing 3-4 weeks to months to hire a new one in a competitive market.
If you don't fail, gracefully, to get these over-expectations completed, the manager does not have a problem to address, because their tactics are working - the work is getting done, even at your expense. If the work isn't getting done, they need to do something about it - if you're already at capacity, that means shifting it to someone else or hiring someone new or informing higher ups that the deadline has to be pushed back.
Deadlines are kind of arbitrary. You'd be amazed how much managers will push you to the absolute limit to hit a deadline that their higher ups really wouldn't have been all that annoyed to have to push back a week with a proper excuse. Your manager (and likely theirs above them one level up) just want to look good, and they will do so at your expense.
Now as far as getting out to other things.... I would recommend starting your own business doing software development somehow. I did this after several years and really loved the flexibility it offered. There are other things that will annoy you about this, for example the way companies invoice on net 30 terms and how you'll almost 100% of the time get paid months late as a business vs an employee, and will encounter businesses lying and giving you the run around, even large respectable ones, just because they can and it enables them some cash flow.
The best recommendation I can give you is to start looking out for when you might be being manipulated, because managers are literally HIRED to do this, and they're so much better at it than you could think they are, and try to learn to recognize when this is happening. They will employ fear tactics and everything else in the world just to get you to work 70 hours in a week when if you don't, nothing happens. Don't trust a word you hear. Even if you're put on a PiP (perf improvement plan), I've seen some organizations do this to actual good performing employees just to scare them into doing 60 hour weeks that they weren't being asked to do, covertly, because the company wanted to push them into overworking themselves without the employee knowing that the company was doing this.
It's an insane amount of gaslighting that you can see from them... I'll stop rambling. For other IT things... I would recommend things like SQL database administration, or honestly, if you hate the culture in all of these coding environments and miss the fun of coding, maybe you would rather enjoy teaching coding to other people in a less stressful environment?
On the flip side you may enjoy being an applications administrator or consultant for some codeless platforms / products that companies implement, like salesforce, service now, ivanti, etc. Not because they're not dull coding, they are very similar, but they're so expansive, while also having a finite amount to learn, that you could then float around implementing that platform for one organization to the next every couple months, always seeing new ways it could be used and not being bored doing the same thing again and again. Find a 'product' that you can implement for an organization (like ITSM tools for example, but there's a lot, I think even in HR and payroll there's things like ultipro that have consultants doing this), and then you can enjoy going and implementing it and having new challenges etc.
But the overcommittment is an issue and a trap that you'll have to push back on because managers in every industry will attempt to do this to you and it won't stop until you do something about it and set your own expectations.
This is the genius of the 40-something employees you see at organizations that seemignly won't do anything, and arbitrarily seem to delay things - They've been through it and have figured out how to be happy. It's by telling you when you request something from them that it'll have to get slotted into the window 3 months from now, rather than trying to please someone and saying... yeah I'll try to get it done this week. In the end the person getting told it'll take 3 months, when they're not that person's manager, that's requesting the work, generally understand even if they grumble about it a little privately.
