That's where the money and expertise is, I'm guessing.
And it's one of those fields where you have to invest a truckload of time and energy in advance learning about everything, but once you've done that keeping up is (provided you're on a focused team) not that hard and it's easy to be productive. But webdev and enterprise IT are so thoroughly vertically integrated (especially when developing LoB apps) moving away basically means facing a nontrivial period of downtime.
If you're valued enough and don't have a primarily liquid lifestyle (relative to cost of living etc) then living off savings could probably work for long enough to study and line up a job somewhere else, but that doesn't discount the added cost/toll of the extra stress it will inevitably impose.
> But some enterprise IT jobs can be soul crushing.
Mmm, yeah. Good work-life balance that provides for some sense of distance is critical with such positions. Something that helps you see beyond the job.
If the job makes that difficult or impossible and it's not because you're in the middle of a sprint or some other temporary situation, burnout is a matter of when, not if. If you can't find a way to to mix things up and get a change of scenery within your current environment (eg, working on a different project, working as design lead on some totally unrelated team, etc), it might be a very very good idea to start mentally preparing yourself to redo your CV, I think.
> How do you non-financially weigh the benefit of pursuing a lifetime of rewarding work at say, one half the salary you could otherwise earn?
Obvious answers are quality of life, general mood and health, etc.
Money is after all a tool, not an end in and of itself. Sure, money will get you lots of "friends" and social status, but that's only because you look shiny and might drop breadcrumbs. I'm not aware of any other reasons money is useful; indeed, the more you have the more vulnerable you are, beyond certain thresholds.
Why do you stay there and keep doing it?