Speaking as someone who has been seduced into academia on multiple occasions by my friends who are professors: They are hopeless optimists. This is not their fault. Indeed, it is a precondition for their existence: just as you would not be surprised to find that most of the creatures sitting on top of a high crag have wings and can fly, you should not be surprised that most professors, and especially most tenured professors, are completely besotted with their lifestyle and can barely conceive of anything else. Darwin has seen to this. The academic environment is all about selection pressure.
For example, this essay is by a particularly self-aware and wry professor, so he's able to joke that "getting a PhD costs you a house". But self-critics don't last long if they go for the jugular, so he doesn't point out that, if you wish to continue doing research after your PhD, it's going to cost you another house, and another: Postdocs pay better than graduate fellowships, but still only half what industry pays, if that, and even less if you calculate the hourly rate. And then to go any further you will need to start writing grants, and administering students, none of which is exactly research. Then you probably won't get to keep your job writing grants because it's hard to get the grants, and hard to get tenure... [1]
So, take this fellow's advice to heart, but be sure to also have a beer with a real cynic before spending fifteen years in pursuit of academic nirvana.
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[1] I never studied CS, so maybe the grass is greener over there and CS is some kind of abundant academic paradise where grants flow like water. But I kind of doubt it.