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.

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

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

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.

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

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.