I'm not going to answer this question directly, but I'll provide an anecdote. I did a PhD over a decade ago. I was at a public R1 university in a college town

I'm not going to answer this question directly, but I'll provide an anecdote. I did a PhD over a decade ago. I was at a public R1 university in a college town in a low cost of living area. Since the school was public, anybody with a university login could see all the salaries. My PhD is not in CS or anything like CS. I was unable to secure a desirable (for me) research or faculty job. My Spouse and I decided to move to a growing medium cost of living city with much better job options. Due to luck and some networking (mostly luck), I landed in the consulting arm of a barely known Enterprise Software company. I definitely wasn't making FAANG money, and the stock performance of this stale Enterprise company was a joke (basically if it moved, it moved down). My base+bonus was more than the salary head of my department. Even with the CoL adjustment, I was probably making more than them. I also worked far fewer hours and far less political BS to deal with. That was the end of Academia for me. I don't make 300K, but I make more now than I did back then.