Research is its own reward to a substantial extent, but as well as (relatively) reducing salaries/job security/etc, there's also a lot more 'publish or perish'

Research is its own reward to a substantial extent, but as well as (relatively) reducing salaries/job security/etc, there's also a lot more 'publish or perish' pressure, which IMO seriously screws with the pleasure of doing research. Good researchers don't like wasting time publishing tiny incremental improvements on their previous work, but they have to to stay in the game. I can understand that in a competitive market for jobs, monetary rewards will go down, but it's a shame that the joy of the work is being broken down as well.