Have you considered some people might not conflate "success" with "net worth"? Wealth = success is a very tired trope, I thought everybody realised what a sham that way of thinking is.
Who cares if they make more or less than a techbro? If they're happy with their job and they earn enough to pay for things they want (house, vacations, whatever), then they should chase the rat-race of the "ladder of success" because...?
We aren't talking about nurses or school teachers. We are talking about professors at large research universities.
Your sibling comment speaks of working "nights and weekends" with frequent travel. That puts an enormous amount of work and stress on their partner, and faculty usually don't make enough money to offset those contributions.
Deciding not to optimize for wealth is perfectly fine. Doing to do so while working nights and weekends with frequent travel isn't. Optimizing for "prestige" is infinitely worse than optimizing for "wealth", because at least the latter can be shared and has utility beyond pure ego.
Again, it's not about prestige, it's about love of science and research. But yes, you do have a point about working nights and weekends. It's not as if "the grind" is not something which is glorified in the tech industry, though :)
I don't think there is any problem with loving science and research.
Deciding to sacrifice your nights, weekends, and financial life to work on science and research is okay. But it's also enormously selfish. Other people who spend time doing "what they love" -- ski bums, for example -- at least recognize their selfishness as such.
Being selfish can be okay. But it's probably not great to be selfish and try to build a life-long partnership. Especially if you don't realize you are being selfish.
I won't tell anyone not to ski bum or not to do a PhD. But I will gut check people when they get confused about the difference between selfish and selfless dedication to a craft. An academic career -- the type where you spend nights and weekends without at least contributing a modicum of financial comfort to those around you -- is selfish.
At the end of the day, most grant-funded projects are born useless. There isn't as much of a difference between ski bumming and PhDing as professors like to pretend.
Maybe not for you, but it's pretty clearly about prestige for a good proportion of the "rising stars" that will actually get tenure track positions at large research universities. I suppose I can only speak directly for my own field, but I have friends in a few others that do not paint a rosy picture either.
If you think the majority of people in your current field are not optimizing for prestige (and you're past the mid-point of a PhD), I would love to know what field that is - seriously.
Who cares if they make more or less than a techbro? If they're happy with their job and they earn enough to pay for things they want (house, vacations, whatever), then they should chase the rat-race of the "ladder of success" because...?