I looked around at my professors in undergrad and virtually all had come from Ivies or other institutions of similar caliber.
At least software pays well.
Other factors include pay for TT professors in high CoL cities not keeping up well enough with inflation over the last 10 years. Those salaries look much worse now than they did when I entered grad school. For the level of education it is underpay for overwork.
Doing science in industry pays substantially better, has better WL balance (really anything will compared to academia), has more job openings in more cities, and there are plenty of challenging problems to work on. Moreover, research skills that STEM phds and academics have are highly valued, at least by some companies.
In the end things seem to have worked out for me. I was warned about all this back when I entered grad school but didn't listen because I really wanted to do math. Following that passion was a good instinct after all even if I wasn't able to achieve the original goals exactly as I planned. I'd 100% do it again.
However, getting a TT position is much more about connections and fashion than people think, especially in a field like pure math where it's much more difficult to argue concrete applicability and outcomes of your theoretical work. And this is especially true when there are many people doing top quality research (which there are).
A top advisor will be able to sell you to departments elsewhere for a top postdoc, or straight into TT if you are impressive enough. They will also be able to culture you appropriately so that all your application materials look precisely right.
Finally, a top advisor will have a significant breadth and depth of knowledge across research fields (this is rarer than you might think in pure math) and be able to guide you to work in areas that have better job markets.
The reality now of TT applications at desirable universities is that the pile is hundreds of applications deep. Each application is a hefty bundle (cover letter 1-2 pages, research statement 2-10 pages (probably on the longer side for math), teaching statement 1-2 pages, cv 3-6 pages depending on formatting, 4+ letters of recommendation each several pages, and other documents like EDI statements which can run 1-2 pages). How the hiring committee winnows this list down to a short list of candidates depends on the institution, but you better believe that if famous prof X from Harvard, who was best friends with commmittee member Y in grad school at Harvard, makes a personal recommendation for candidate Z to committee member Y, then candidate Z has a significantly higher chance of making that short list than anyone else in the pile.
Another reason for this is that the work is so esoteric and fields are so siloed now that it's very hard for committee members to make a fair and true evaluation of research quality for themselves. I guarantee you they are not taking time to read and evaluate quality of research in research papers in most cases. The input of their trusted colleagues at other institutions holds weight as does metrics like publication counts and where the papers are accepted. By the way if you have a top advisor it may be much easier for you to figure out how to get your results published in a top journal.
You see?
Also I was in differential geometry.
The impression I got from these few professors was that the quality of research (besides status benefits) would be significantly higher. Something along the lines of, "most math researchers aren't doingimportant and groundbreaking research, only the top 5-10 departments are". Do you agree with that?
What I have experienced over my time in academia is that priorities change over time.
When I was young and in graduate school I was very happy to live a spartan life and devote the bulk of my time to research. I thought very little about finances.
Now I have a partner and a child. Postdoc salaries are simply not sufficient to support them financially. The need to move every few years for a new position makes it difficult for my partner to have her own steady career.
I'm quite confident I could still make a good researcher. In fact, I'm being paid for precisely that at my new job. I just don't happen to be in academia where the pay and WLB sucks and everyone expects you to sacrifice quality of life on the altar of their virtuous research.
Incentives and priorities in academia (especially pure math) are by now almost totally disconnected with reality. My former colleagues have no idea what I am doing at my current job and don't even know what sort of questions to ask about what I do (beyond idiotic questions like "what math do you use?"). There's no need for them to know because they're coddled in an archaic system that doesn't foster true innovation (it shields them from the market forces that would otherwise compel them to innovate).
Beyond the better living conditions, I am happy I left academia because IMO it is not a good setting to do good research, it is exactly the opposite.