Having spent 7 years getting a PhD (and a year prior working at a top lab), and then at industry; one of the most amusing facts to me is the belief in academia that professors/postdocs have much longer hours and "work harder" than their "9-5" colleagues in industry.
If you speak with recovering professors and post-docs who've joined industry, you'll quickly realize that one of their big surprises is the faster pace of work, and how much of it there is. Publishing of course is not sufficient, it actually has to work, at scale, reproducibly.
I like the academic environment, because at its best, it allows you explore something very deeply. Efficiency and creativity are different goals. There is value to a meandering path. Even if industry may have a fast pace solving problems, academia at its best, makes you ask a better / different question.
If you speak with recovering professors and post-docs who've joined industry, you'll quickly realize that one of their big surprises is the faster pace of work, and how much of it there is. Publishing of course is not sufficient, it actually has to work, at scale, reproducibly.
I like the academic environment, because at its best, it allows you explore something very deeply. Efficiency and creativity are different goals. There is value to a meandering path. Even if industry may have a fast pace solving problems, academia at its best, makes you ask a better / different question.