I have a friend who was an accountant and became disillusioned with the stress and long hours and decided to retrain as a teacher. He's been doing it a few years now and loves it.
Says it's the best decision he ever made. Yes, he misses the money, but he now has very low travel costs as he works in the same town where he lives, compared with a few thousand a year for a season ticket, so that compensates quite a long way, not to mention the commute is just a few minutes rather than 2 hours per day. He doesn't think the time is much different in total - he was out of the house 10 hours per day before, now he works 10 hours per day on average to include marking and planning in the evenings - basically swapping travelling time for marking/planning time. What he really enjoys are the holidays.
Thing is, though, he has a very domineering personality. The kind of bloke where it's natural for everyone to notice him when he walks into a room -he really has "a presence". He tells me that he has few problems with the pupils as he is always consistent in his dealings with them and adopts a firm but fair approach. When he first gets a new class, he makes it clear who's the boss, by setting boundaries and sticking to them, usually by being a bit too strict at first and then softening slightly as the weeks pass, when he's made his point.
Yes, he finds the bureaucracy and management tiresome to deal with, but he had years of dealing with HMRC as an accountant, so is well accustomed to jobsworths and dealing with forever changing laws and rules, not to mention dealing with difficult/dishonest clients forever trying to bend the rules.
For him, it's his personality and presence that have made the job bearable. It looks as if, today, with the discipline and behaviour issues, a good teacher is more about being able to control and discipline rather than knowing the subject inside out. Shame, but that's how it seems to be.