It's a pity that these tremendous acts of courage are often overlooked because its _easier_ to walk away from a lot of money.
Yes. If he was being paid $250K/yr, that means he did a great job while he was there. It would not be that difficult for him to return to finance. I've quit my job a couple times to travel and when I returned to the workforce my new position paid more than I made previously...
A. On the one end, one optimizes for overall expected yield. There's no finite target, the goal is "as much as possible". With this objective, walking away from a lot of low-risk money for much less and high-risk is much harder. Similarly, the lower the starting point, the more open you are to take up risk because you don't have much to lose anyway.
B. On the other end, one has specific targets. Once these targets are met, money ceases to be a decision criterion. With this frame, it is actually easier to walk away from a lot of money after you have achieved X, Y and Z.
These are simplified extremes of course, in reality it's a mix of both and shifts over time, but it goes to show that there's no single "correct" answer.