A lot of successful physicists have stories about unorthodox career paths and lucky breaks. This should be a red flag for anybody considering study of physics. But maybe it suggests that exploiting opportunities and lucky breaks is part of what physics education is about. You have to decide if you want to live your life that way.
Why didn't I go into engineering? That was kind of an accident. Note that when I was in high school thinking about what I wanted to do, the digital revolution had barely begun, and maybe engineering still seemed a bit stodgy to someone living in a sleepy suburb with little exposure to the world at large. I had intended to major in math at a small college with no engineering school, and ended up adding a physics major and heading to grad school. I loved experimental science, and thrived in the lab. My parents are both scientists, and had pretty good careers, so there was that whole role model thing.
At my present job, we have a full engineering staff, including programmers. Why do we need scientists? There are actually a lot of scientists working in "engineering" organizations. I've noticed that the scientists tend to be more multidisciplinary and quantitative. Whatever the difference, I think it helps to have both perspectives. I get handed weird, unsolvable problems, that can't be categorized. I develop a "system" view of how things work. I work on manufacturing problems, customer applications, and so forth. I'm one of the "math people," and I handle weird things like understanding measurement noise. I actually like theory.
When I think about whether I should have been an engineer, I remind myself that I might have failed at it.
I've been pretty lucky. My job isn't glamorous, but I've had a good career, and my job has never been super intense in terms of stress or hours. I enjoy my evenings and weekends.