I cannot overstate this enough. I don't think the psych rotation is a reliable measure of whether you'll like psychiatry or not, especially when medical schools stick medical students with high acuity patients who are not gratifying to work with. I also don't think that the people you work with should be a reliable marker of why you went into that specialty too - I've worked with great people in every specialty that inspired me to almost pick their specialty and extremely terrible people that made me not want to consider that same specialty.
Unfortunately, medical students will make their decision based on the personalities of people they worked with, which I think comes down to luck with who you're paired with, or based on the patient population, which in psych rotations isn't representative of how psychiatry is mainly practiced in the US.
However, I think that you should consider definitely lifestyle factors such as income and work hours when picking a specialty. The practical matter is that your job allows you to make a living. There's nothing wrong with that motivation. The question becomes: how much does that motivation matter to you? Some medical students have different pressures on them to choose a field that makes more money, or have more time off, or obtain that prestige regardless of length of training, or a million other things. It matters to reflect on what motivations matter in your life, and no one can tell you what those are even though they'll try to.
If your main purpose in life is to work to make a living, then you should know this and don't put too much effort in worrying about the work. Be an average psychiatrist if you want and choose to focus on what matters to you, whether it's your marriage, your family, your children, your cat, your rock garden, whatever you want. People may criticize you for that, but I don't think it's practical that everyone necessarily can or wants to be above average in their work.
I wouldn't put too much stock what other attendings think of psychiatry or any specialties other than their own for that matter, and even then I wouldn't hold a candle to it. There's going to be pros and cons to each specialty and you'll have to determine which ones are favorable or dealbreakers for you. Physicians, especially older ones, probably don't have a good grasp of the lifestyle/salary in fields other than their own though. I don't think any of them can tell you that less than
75% of psychiatrists work under 45 hours a week.
