[rdlecler1]

When you spend ten years of your life pursuing something, and you feel you have few prospects then it's likely that you'll continue down the same path. The attitude is better the devil you know than the devil you don't. I left academia after my PhD because I felt that I couldn't do another ten years in academia scraping by on $35k/year postdoc salary... Instead I went through a couple of startups, and here I am seven years later making what I probably would have been making had I never left academia. PhDs can make you painfully unhireable. Oh the irony!