I've got PhD in a quantitative social science from an R1 university, so my experience may be different than others with PhDs in CS, Engineering, or the Physical

I've got PhD in a quantitative social science from an R1 university, so my experience may be different than others with PhDs in CS, Engineering, or the Physical Sciences. In my view moving to industry was one of the best decisions I made in my life. Much(!!) better salary, much easier to find jobs, lots of choices of where to live, and better work/life balance. Having a decent salary and job choices also helped to stabilize my personal life as well. The big reasons for leaving academia were job and money. Some of the brightest people I knew were fighting to get $40K postdocs jobs in high cost of living cities. Others were taking adjunct professor jobs in towns they didn't want to live in. All of it to hopefully one day have a tenure track job. One of the research jobs I was a finalist for had a terrible salary in NYC, but they provided subsidized housing in what was basically student housing for faculty. Not getting that job was one of the last rejections before I gave up academia. The small reasons were all around being disillusioned with academia, both with research and teaching. The more honest professors would tell students to explore life outside academia. The ego-manics would boast about how they had a great tenure process and great retirement benefits, but all that was gone for new graduates. Some of the best and worst human beings I've met in life were in academia. I was lucky that before my PhD I was a developer. So I had a some credibility when I applied for roles in software companies. Just for a different viewpoint, it's really hard to evaluate the life you didn't live. When I looked at my PhD cohort 1-5 years after graduation it looked liked academia was a terrible decision. 5-10 years out the folks who wanted to stay in academia are doing well and the ones who left are also doing well. By well I mean with life, not just money. So maybe in the long run things work out, but the first few years after graduating can be awful.