I am surprised that you don't know this. Just look at how much money altcoin projects are raising for absolute vaporware garbage that nobody needs. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Core developers could probably earn a lot of money by just giving permission to be listed as advisors in a variety of project. Just imagine the money if they participated in some more deeply, as co-founders. Integrity is what keeps them away.
Oh, When he said "alternatives," I didn’t think of scam projects or other reputation-wrecking paths like joining the porn industry or launching a worthless shitcoin.
I assumed he meant more reasonable and respectable alternatives -- like working at a well-paying tech firm. For example, landing a job at a U.S.-based company earning $150k–$300k a year.
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You mention some very bad examples
Gavin Andresen might be controversial, but how exactly is Jeff Garzik a "bad" example? He laid the foundation for much of what the mining ecosystem relies on today -- nearly every piece of mining hardware out there still builds on the base of his code.
I don't closely follow Core devs news, so maybe I've missed something recent, but that doesn't change the fact that he played a major role in Bitcoin's early infrastructure, and the same applies to Gavin.
In any case, the request was for names -- I provided them. Whether they're seen as good or bad examples is subjective, they were prominent contributors who moved on. That's the only claim being made.