I don&#x27;t know about you but I&#x27;m quite grateful that people like Donald Knuth stayed in the apparently terrible place that academia is rather then becoming senior managers at IBM for 500k+ a year.<p>I don&#x27;t think that not having a huge salary == lower quality of life, I think having a non-rewarding job does though.<p>&gt; Industry is dirty and being a penniless researcher is the only noble path through life.&quot;<p>I never advocated this, while for some people in fact being penniless doesn&#x27;t significantly impact quality of life; for a lot of talented people that want to have families it does in fact matter and it&#x27;s a large loss for science if Academia cannot retain these people.