I remember when I was in my early twenties, I was just getting by. Although I was way ahead of my friends compensation wise, even at that time, I was still not doing much more than getting by, standing on my own two feet. My primary complaint about that job was being on call, nights/weekends, and low pay, poor treatment by senior management due to low respect, etc.
Now I've swung to the other end of the spectrum. High pay at 150K a year, occasional nights/weekends, and technically on call though rare to get called, and I get to work from home, though seems like respect is elusive, and dependent on the opinion of the person in front of you.
As I contemplate changing careers, I reflect back on different types of jobs I've had. All of them had something wrong with them, mostly not enough pay for the BS. But now I wonder, will I leave my high paying career and take a 60+% pay cut (at least initially) to go to something else that has something that sucks? Or did I find a reasonable gem of a job with in house (not agency) corporate recruiting. Good hours, good pay for my low cost living lifestyle, still allows me to save, and I'm not really carrying that much responsibility, just place people, compared to being responsible for all these complex applications and systems 24/7. One of my colleagues told me he almost threw up the other day after he almost couldn't recover from a database issue.
There is no rosy job, but is there a balance? Having worked on both ends of the spectrum, and worked in corporate long enough, observing, researching, I think Corporate Recruiting is as good as it gets for my needs. Not really a ton of responsibility or technical difficulty, not getting called for break/fix situations, just some BS and frustration once in a while when a candidate takes another offer, flakes, pads their resume, etc.