[tellarin]

Academic work year and no crazy hours? Sorry, but you clearly don't work with research.

Working all days of the week is incredibly common.

And, unfortunately, crunch time specially near major conference deadlines is almost becoming the norm. Of course, the focus on publication is another problem related to that.

[arethuza]

Having worked in academic research and co-founded a startup I would admit that the working hours weren't that different. However, in a startup you have a much wider set of pressures - making payroll at the end of the month, keeping customers happy, investing your own money to keep the business going, hiring/firing/managing people etc. (it's a very long list).

[tellarin]

Having had my own co-founded company gone bankrupt, I have to agree with you.

[fyi80]

People can work as much or as little as they want, once they make tenure. It's not that different from the startup model: hard work for a few years up front, then cash in your chips, with 2-3 decades of guaranteed income until government retirement age.

[tellarin]

This would only be the case if every research job was in a university and in tenure track, which is definitely not the case.

Many research positions are in industry, or are postdocs or non-tenure track. Besides the fact that many countries don't have anything similar to tenure.

Also, not everybody on tenure track reaches it.