Academia can be really chill as long as you don’t have aspirations for greatness
As someone who just likes doing bench work and absolutely never wants to be a PI I’d much rather stay in academia. No profit motive means much less pressure and no one checking too closely on what I’m doing.
My PI tells me what she wants, I tell her how long that will take and if I’ll need extra assistance, and then I give her the results when I have them. Then I fuck off whenever I want and as long as my rats get fed no one really questions it.