I am a bit weird, because I have a regular software engineering job while also doing a part time PhD. I love my advisors, and I think the work I'm doing is pretty cool, but when my advisors asked if I was considering doing a postdoc after I finish the the PhD, I had to figure out a polite way to tell them "absolutely not".

I know not everything is about money, but fundamentally a regular industry job is just going to pay categorically better than nearly anything in academia. It's one thing for me to do the PhD for nights and weekends while taking home a yuppie software engineering salary because I want to formalize my "learning for fun", it's another for me to dedicate myself full-time to continuing the research for peanuts. It honestly kind of feels like a scam from universities; by definition, nearly anyone with a technical PhD is qualified for decent-paying work in industry, so the fact that universities pay so little for post-docs is borderline-insulting.

Bit of a personal anecdote on this:

I've not done a post-doc, but I used to work for a relatively prestigious private university in NYC as a "research scientist" [1]. I put "research scientist" in quotes, because that was my official title, but my work largely boiled down to software engineering, mostly JavaScript and a bit of Haskell. In 2015, I was being paid $90,000/year, which may seem like a lot of money until you realize that it's NYC; taxes and cost of living are pretty high. The university refused to pay any of my moving expenses, and they barely paid any of my health insurance (basically the bare minimum they were allowed to with the ACA).

For perspective, most entry-level software engineering jobs in NYC at the time were paying at least $120,000 even at startups, and big organizations were paying more like $130,000, and I wasn't entry level. I had been a senior-level engineer at my previous job in Dallas.

Upon moving to NYC, and starting my job, and having a fiance (now wife) that wasn't able to work at the time due to some visa issues, I was having a lot of trouble making ends meet, and I was having trouble paying rent [2] and medical bills. After three straight months of having to borrow money from my parents to cover my bills, I talked to the management team for the project I was working on, trying to explain to them that I was having a lot of trouble holding my head above water, I had maxed out my credit card moving to NYC and that they were paying well below market rates, so I would really just like an advance to at least avoid paying huge amounts of interest since they hadn't covered any relocation expenses.

Instead, I got a long, indignant response explaining how important the work they were doing was, and then told me that I should be grateful for even having the job, and that I was already being paid higher than [other person on team] who had been there longer, so I'll just need to figure things out myself. It really rubbed me the wrong way, because they acted like I was living this life of luxury when I felt like I was barely surviving, and they treated me like I was fucking Gordon Gecko for simply Googling "market rate for software engineers in NYC".

I eventually got laid off from that job (really fired, long story), and sort of swore an oath that I would never rely on academia as my primary source of income ever again. I've still done work for universites since then (I was an adjunct lecturer for a public university for about a year), but I always made it clear to them that I will be doing work for a private employer as my primary income.

A part of me loves academia, but they can be the embodiment of the "this is more than a job, it's a family" employer red flag.

[1] It's not hard to find my work history, so feel free to figure out which university with some clever searching, but I politely ask that you don't post it here.

[2] Before you give me a lecture, I wasn't trying to rent a luxury apartment in Greenwich Village, it was a pretty crappy apartment in Washington Heights infested with mold and mice. It cost me $2100/month in 2015.