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Here's my anecdote to balance your anecdote:

I was getting paid very well in a junior position at CERN, rarely working more than 7.5 hours a day, doing interesting things, and with a hefty bonus when I took a three day long weekend business trip.

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I'm not sure this is much of a counterbalance? I think you can generally expect junior positions to have less responsibility and stress, at the expense of virtually no chance of moving up unless you really, really grind, and even then, there's not a lot of space at CERN. I think you really have to love it to the exclusion of all else and be smarter than your already smart peers to succeed there.

These are the places where the person sitting next to you and doing pretty much the same job as you could be making half of what you are making simply because you have a CERN contract and they work for a contractor.

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