There are not as many sysadmin job these days because so many on-prem deployments have moved to the cloud. Consider becoming a cloud version of a sysadmin (whatever they’re calling it now…). Every platform offers lots of free learning resources and has a certification process.
Ehh, it’s ok in the case of JetBrains - if your subscription lapses your license converts to a ‘perpetual fallback license’ so can just continue using the version you installed when the subscription was originally purchased.
I’m using a 4 year old version of PhpStorm with no issues and no subscription. My PyCharm sub ended 6 months ago and I’m staying on the 2023 version of PyCharm because the latest version comes with lots of AI which makes my CPU fans scream continuously.