[bananaquant]

> You can generally exit at any time and immediately transition into lucrative careers in, for example, tech and finance.

I work in both and routinely interview PhDs in physics. I would not say that the transition is immediate nor easy, as the quote implies. Both tech and finance have specific knowledge, e.g., programming skills and understanding of the markets, and most PhD graduates have to pick those up on their own. Having a degree from one of the Ivies will facilitate the screening round, but past that point it hardly counts.