Your point on insecurity is spot on. Your concerns are my concerns as well. Compensation is just (the most quantifiable) part of the insecurity formula that plays a greater part in my case.
Funny you mentioned hep; I happen on work on hep-th. Do I love the subject? Absolutely. Is compensation the most important thing? Absolutely not. However, I've learned over the years that appreciating other people's successful work and actually trying to build on top of that are pretty different, and the handful of successful theories I love are really built upon the (life-long) failure of thousands and thousands of nobodies, and I'm very likely to be a nobody, given that I'm not thrown of the train of nobodies in the first place. It's just natural to think that if I'm going to be a nobody, I might as well be compensated well for that (and not making my head explode all the time), like that guy. The thought really puts a dent on the "love", and I'm personally (maybe just me) much more prone to exchanging pure passion for something more tangible.
> higher salaries (and less freedom) of industry.
Depending on the definition of freedom, when you have a "jobby" job it's at least easy to separate work and life, whereas in academia, at least in the theoretical branches, it seems much harder to draw boundaries. (I'm not saying people in the industry don't work hard.)
Funny you mentioned hep; I happen on work on hep-th. Do I love the subject? Absolutely. Is compensation the most important thing? Absolutely not. However, I've learned over the years that appreciating other people's successful work and actually trying to build on top of that are pretty different, and the handful of successful theories I love are really built upon the (life-long) failure of thousands and thousands of nobodies, and I'm very likely to be a nobody, given that I'm not thrown of the train of nobodies in the first place. It's just natural to think that if I'm going to be a nobody, I might as well be compensated well for that (and not making my head explode all the time), like that guy. The thought really puts a dent on the "love", and I'm personally (maybe just me) much more prone to exchanging pure passion for something more tangible.
> higher salaries (and less freedom) of industry.
Depending on the definition of freedom, when you have a "jobby" job it's at least easy to separate work and life, whereas in academia, at least in the theoretical branches, it seems much harder to draw boundaries. (I'm not saying people in the industry don't work hard.)
By the way, glad you're happy with your decision.