Actually it gets harder and harder to pursue an academic 'career' if you actually obtain your PhD inside the traditional system later than the age of 30 (e.g. i

Actually it gets harder and harder to pursue an academic 'career' if you actually obtain your PhD inside the traditional system later than the age of 30 (e.g. in Germany), if you are not willing to change the academic system to circumvent recent rules of 'academic age' associated with a lot of newly created tenure positions. Funnily it will actually be quite easy to get a professorship at one of our universities of applied sciences if you come from industry with a track record and have a PhD (even obtained at 60). At the same time salary of a professor (at least for his work at the uni) will be more comparable to junior staff in other parts of the industry/world. The academic job market is very strange. General recommendation: don't do your PhD if you care mostly about this part and do not want to take a huge risk.