I’m actually pretty surprised by this, the people I personally know in academia who aren’t community members tend to a) be true believers about their impact or b) really love the problems they work on or their subfields or c) feel kind of burned. Liking academia for work-life balance reasons seem very surprising to me, even my friends in fields with a fair amount of free time (eg theoretical CS) usually believe that they can have an easier life elsewhere.
I’m actually pretty surprised by this, the people I personally know in academia who aren’t community members tend to a) be true believers about their impact or b) really love the problems they work on or their subfields or c) feel kind of burned. Liking academia for work-life balance reasons seem very surprising to me, even my friends in fields with a fair amount of free time (eg theoretical CS) usually believe that they can have an easier life elsewhere.