Well, ham radio is an EXTREMELY diverse field. I mean, some people are using kilowatts and arrays of yagi antenna to transmit earth-moon-earth. Others are using minimal power (e.g. less than a typical bicycle lamp) to reach someone at the other side of the earth. Some are designing nice sound compression algorithms or algorithms for software designed radio in FPGAs on their self-designed board. Other try to build a full transceiver with less than 40 components total. Some are seeking contacts "rare" countries like other seek rare post stamps.

And most of this isn't really done to communicate. For that, most ham amateurs would use cell-phones, Facebook or whatnot. It's done for the sake of doing it. Or, in other words, to have an excuse to tinker with technical things.

That you can actually communicate is often just a consequence, a by-product. And the "communication" e.g. in contests to seek rare countries is actually really, really bland and boring. Translated to english: "Here is Mike, Calling Reunion, calling Reunion, calling Reunion, Mike here" - "Here is Jaques, Renunion, answering to Mike. I can your you very bad" - "Mike here, to Jaque. I can your you quite nice. And thanks for the talks ... calling Mongolia, calling Mongolia, here is Mike, calling Mongolia ..." --- and it's on PSK31 or CW even shorter.

You see, the ACTUAL communication is boring. The kick is probably to be able to manage and adjust your transceiver, wires, antenna, technical skills to actually be able to connect to these countries.

Or to be able to program and use in-real-life a sound compression algorithm with machine-learning and to test that with alike people on e.g. HF, Meteoscatter, via Satellite (which all produce very different channel characteristics).

Or to produce your own 6-layer PCP with an FPGA that actually does nice SDR algorithms.

It's a means to self-gratification.