Comment by jp57

My first job out of college (1990s) was as a programmer in a university research lab. It didn't pay as well as industry, but it was enormously rewarding in so many other ways. I had a ton of autonomy; I got to speak face-to-face with my users and solve their problems; I got to talk to interesting smart people every day; I got a close up view of some super interesting research that I would have known nothing about, etc.

I don't know how this kind of job works today. My salary was somewhat less than I would've made in industry at the time (pre-dot-com), but now it seems that universities would likely pay much less than industry.