[dmfdmf]

As a software engineer your best bet would be start or join and build a software startup that looks promising as a principle owner or vested employee. The problem is picking what problem to solve and also getting the resources ($$) to do the job. Also, the skill set for software engineer doesn't necessarily overlap with the skill set necessary to build a company. Beware that you can sink 5-10 years in such ventures with nothing but (sub-market) salary in the end. Most people can't afford to do this more than once.

I once knew a guy who was an HP engineer who bailed on HP and went through two different startups that failed. He said the problem with engineers is they think that success is about the technology but the lesson he learned is that it also about marketing and strategy which the failed startups didn't budget enough for and had poor execution plans.

FWIW, many of the people on the "richest people" lists like Fortune, made their money through real estate. The main reason is because real estate is inherently leveraged via the mortgage so if you make some good moves your return is multiplied. But of course with leverage comes risk and those lists suffer from survivor bias -- meaning they are the people that never flamed out in a bad market and lost everything because they could not pay the mortgage, which is common.