Yes my experience is with public librarians, not the academic side.
I agree with your post and I'm not clear what our disagreement is. My point is that people are choosing these jobs because they are ok with the tradeoffs. They are being compensated, even if it's not with money. You describe benefits of being a librarian.
For example:
> They're still doing valuable, dangerous work and are literally in charge of keeping people alive
Yes and somehow people still sign up, so it looks like the wages + intangible benefits package is working.
> my program none of my peers ever mentioned that being why they were here
These kinds of life tradeoffs are rarely articulated. In fact I would argue that the savior/sacrificial narrative you describe is likely a polite screen to hide motivations like "I'm afraid of jobs where I can lose my spot if I perform poorly".
I agree with your post and I'm not clear what our disagreement is. My point is that people are choosing these jobs because they are ok with the tradeoffs. They are being compensated, even if it's not with money. You describe benefits of being a librarian.
For example:
> They're still doing valuable, dangerous work and are literally in charge of keeping people alive
Yes and somehow people still sign up, so it looks like the wages + intangible benefits package is working.
> my program none of my peers ever mentioned that being why they were here
These kinds of life tradeoffs are rarely articulated. In fact I would argue that the savior/sacrificial narrative you describe is likely a polite screen to hide motivations like "I'm afraid of jobs where I can lose my spot if I perform poorly".