[ghshephard]

There are lots of scenarios where people have found the job, culture, and coworkers that they love, but are not yielding the greatest ROI of their skills/knowledge/experience and connections.

The willingness to leave something you love, to go do something that will be much more profitable, is not so much personal choice as cold-hard economics.

A good example is how a lot of lawyers will do not-for-profit legal work, because they feel like they are making a difference, and improving the world. They are making a personal choice to do something that is important for them (or perhaps they are burned out in the corporate grind).

I've also seen lawyers leave the organizations that they love, because they also realize they need to make a lot of money - usually to pay off ludicrous college loans - but also just to leverage their position for some period of time.

At the end of the day, every decision is "personal" - but I think there is a difference between the emotive, "I chose to do this because I love doing it" verus the colder, "I chose to do this because it maximizes the risk-adjusted net-present-value of future earnings."