[lynal]

This is called a "compensating differential" (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential).

There's a decent body of literature in economics on this. This falls under labor economics.

[jnwatson]

Interesting. In the same vein, video game companies have a negative compensating differential. Lots of kids want to grow up to program video games, so they don't have to pay them as much under worse work environments.

[distant_hat]

I've seen postdocs work for zero pay for months and in one case over a year to get into prestigious labs.

[dmoy]

Yes that is precisely why video game companies can, on average, get away with lower pay, worse crunch, worse job security, etc.

[PascLeRasc]

WAY worse job security. It seems like every month there's a big Twitter thread about which developer laid off dozens as soon as they finished a project, with no warning or severance.

[sandov]

After taking graphics programming in college, I don't ever want to work in video games.

[gpm]

I'm the opposite really. The only reason I want to work in video games is graphics programming seemed fun.

Different strokes for different folks and all that.