Why I should leave academia

I've been throwing these ideas around all day and I want to get them down to look back on.  Will I always agree with the me of today?

Today I'm thinking that the right choice is to beg and plead professionally apply for that non-academic job I interviewed for a year ago.  I came close to getting it and I think there's a good chance I would have received the offer if it weren't for the timing. I asked for a little leeway to finish my post-doc and they took someone who didn't need that leeway.

I could try again. The job isn't posted, but they're large enough a company that they have 7-8 people in that position, so one has to come up now and then. In fact, one did come up about six months later, but I was already here starting the professor thing.

Advantages of that job:

• Location. That's where I want to be.
• Stability. The position is usually a continuing one, not contract. I could buy a home and make a home for myself. 
• The actual job. I would be doing what I am now only teaching.  I wouldn't just be explaining the basics to uninterested undergrads. I'd actually get to do the fun stuff myself.
• The quality of the work. This type of work does get done in academia and people tell me I will be able to do it once my courses are more solid. But seriously, this work, within academia, is shit quality. We don't have the resources to do it right. With this company, I would be able to do it by the book. 
• Skills development.  While as a professor I would be solidifying my knowledge of the basics, with this job I could actually develop my own higher level skills.
• Does not preclude teaching.  I could try for the best of both worlds. I can imagine that after doing it for a few years I could see if I could get a single course at a local college teaching this topic at its advanced level. I might even be able to get a day a week off for one semester a year or something like that. 
• No snotty undergrads. 'Nuf said.

Would it be perfect? Of course not. Nothing is. Let me see if I can figure out some of the possible disadvantages.

• Office hours. This is a double edged sword. I'd get my weekends, but the 9-5 thing would probably not be very flexible. It doesn't really bother me, but the flexibility is nice.
• Strict, limited vacation. Not much of it. I'd have to book in advance like regular folk. BUT, I could book it at any time of the year. Here, there's no way to do it during the semesters, no matter how important it may be.
• No sabbatical. But seriously, will I ever get to sabbatical?
• Academic egos. I was told in the interview that there was a lot of dealing with academic egos. I can easily imagine that there are academics who use the services of this company and think they're so much superior.  Whatever. Can it really be that much worse than a lecture hall full of inflated 20 year old egos?

Today, the right path seems clear to me. I need to look back on this and see if it stays that way after this upcoming interview and the end of the semester. I hope it does, and I hope I can make it work. I want stability. I want stability as much as (more than?) I want to breathe.