For many, no; taking on lots of sponsorships, you can make a good amount of money (especially the ones where you agree to do X posts across Y social media accounts for Z period of time, essentially being fully sponsored across a large swath of life).

But for a lot of tech/engineering channels, it'd be immensely difficult to make the same salary as you could working at a FAANG or the like. (I'm making about half what I made when I had a W-2, but it's enough).

Do fun projects of your choosing vs the grind of corporate life.

The former has a rather large non-pecuniary component of total compensation.

Exactly; especially in terms of stress—which is a major problem with my chronic illness, and both the main reason I'm happy to be away from a W-2, but also the thing that makes me most nervous as I'm dependent on marketplace healthcare (which is quite expensive for much worse benefits), and it's harder to get things like life/disability insurance as an independent.

Being a top YouTube producer is not without stress : Reacting to the change in number of followers, responding to comment that can be unpolite, managing sponsors...

Thank you for taking a pay cut to do what you do, I'm so glad your channels exist. Also please remember to take vacations! (trade shows don't count)

If you’re not in software the salary you’d be making as an employee would be much lower than what you refer to as “FAANG” though

You just need to start selling supplements, anti-aging creams and time shares.

His current Patreon has 57 paid members. Unless he has another revenue stream, I think he'd need more paid members.

He is a senior mechanical engineering student at purdue. I think the channel is something he is just getting rolling in his spare time.

youtube ads and sponsorship are his additional revenue streams