A software engineer is a life full of a surprising amount of importance. Frequently you're working on massive systems that affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions. And he trades it in for a "real" and "romantic" job of being a envelope peddler?
I mean, good for him. Do what makes you happy, but don't try to slyly say, "P.S. You have no soul and your job is meaningless."
Growing up, our family bought a completely gutted house -- no drywall, plumbing, wiring, nothing. One crazy summer, we did enough work to make the place livable, and in the following years, we re-sided it, fenced the property, did finishing work inside, and more. In addition to this, I had jobs (since I was about 12) mowing lawns, "mucking" horse stalls, siding, roofing, stocking shelves, and more that I can't recall off the top of my head.
To me (and I assume to anyone else who has spent years doing laborious work), this is the definition of real work. A task that works your body. Not "real" as in meaningful, but "real" as in true. Work that does not leave you stressed at the end of the idea, both because heavy exercise releases endorphins and because most of the time, your work is (temporarily) done at the end of the day.
Now if the original author had said "real job" instead of "real work", then I would have agreed with you. My dad did not attend college and has had a labor job my whole life. He always told me to work hard in school and to be smart, because I didn't want a job where I had to do real work like he did. That to me is real work.
I get the same satisfation from a good day's work from either, and I think this notion of a "hard day's work" s exactly that: a romantic notion with no real basis in reality. If anything, it's just another example of how modern american society is anti-intellectual.
And I find it tiresome and hackneyed and often part of a post-hoc rationalization for people who couldn't hack it in a job with more responsibility. Which is not to say that's exactly what this author experienced, but it's certainly an archetype I've run into in the valley more than once.
Ultimately, people should do what makes them happy without any delusions about what is "real", what is "meaningful", and what is "productive".