I am not associated with that company, but the nomatic (original) backpack completely transformed my travel experience to something hassle free - I got it years back right in the aftermath of their kickstarter campaign.
The reasons you raise are very true (I have been there), but most of them are mere symptoms of something deeper. I believe the root causes are exactly the kind of social dynamics discussed in the article.
Terrible pay / other opportunities:
Even at Ass. Prof. level pay is not so terrible. Sure, you won't get rich, but for most in academia that never has been a goal and would not matter.
Long Hours:
That also mostly would not be a problem, as long as you would be able to do what you truly like.
Cruel supervisors:
Here it's getting interesting. Why do you think that is? My hypothesis is that people become cruel if they don't like what they do. They basically become grumpy old men at the age of 40, because they always have to fight. Fight for money, fight against reviewers, fight internal department politics. Supervisors become cruel because they secretly hate their jobs, or better: the jobs the system makes them do.
Gambling on Tenure:
If you have the "right" supervisor in the "right" field (read: a good networker in the current hype topic) your chances are actually not that bad. But as soon as you do something that is either currently not on the radar of the community, or you do something that is even controversial, you get yourself into a fight - which as a young researcher you will lose. In academia you can only make it, if you are well connected and the community carries you there. Group think again. After years in the system I believe it all boils down to that: social dynamics and group think.
Unfortunately true for most scientific communities and the reason why the current academic system is badly broken and talented young minds decide to quit academia before even submitting a dissertation.
6) believing your technical opinion matters -- I've seen way too many VP's making technical decisions that they are too far from the work to make, trust your team!
This! It needs management people who understand their role as being "facilitators", rather than being "decision makers". And they are kind of rare.
My "functional programming epiphany" came in a talk by Martin Odersky, who remarked that imperative programming is like thinking in terms of time, whereas functional programming is like thinking in terms of space. Don't think about the sequence of how to achieve things, but the building blocks needed to do so. That nailed it and made me a Scala convert ever since.
tl;dr
"Classical" (natural) scientist: "X is only understood once I found first principles that x can be reduced to."
"Modern" scientist: "X might be so complicated that there are no first principles that x can be reduced to. Rather, finding a neural network that can do x is the best I can do, and it explains why x can be done."
Excellent. In German there is a word for this trust in yourself and that things are happening when they are happening: "Gottvertrauen" (literally: "trust in god", although often used in a non-religious context)
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6354/880.2#1504269...
on why scientists need social media influencers …