In areas like medicine and law I can believe that's true. However I don't think it's that common in CS or engineering. I know quite a few people who've moved fr

In areas like medicine and law I can believe that's true. However I don't think it's that common in CS or engineering. I know quite a few people who've moved from academia to industry and vice versa, and the pay difference is definitely not 10x multiples. When a professor making low six figures jumps to Google, he or she gets a pay raise, but more like 20-50%, not 10x: Google isn't making $1m+ salary offers. For engineers afaict it varies by line of work. I don't know a lot about areas where being a principal is a thing (civil engineering?), but I can imagine those are lucrative. In areas like aerospace, if you compare full-professor salaries at research institutions, to senior engineering staff salaries at places like Lockheed, they're pretty comparable. If anything it's easier to make more in academia, because you can consult on the side, whereas big engineering companies typically disallow that in their employment contracts.