FWIW, I have a PhD and spent five years as an assistant professor. I then went on to take a different job as a lecturer for a few years before leaving academia

FWIW, I have a PhD and spent five years as an assistant professor. I then went on to take a different job as a lecturer for a few years before leaving academia completely. The general complaint JF raised rings true. In my field (learning sciences), there was a TON of jank publications. The majority of the published work still is stuff that exists solely to increment the author's publication count. The term "least publishable unit" was used unironically. The focus is flawed. There is still a lot of good work being done in the system, but that work is really only 10% of the work that is done. I had to choose between artificially inflating my pub count and not making tenure. In the end, I decided to walk away - I personally don't have the kind of perseverance necessary for that. Of course, I now make significantly more money and am actually appreciated by my colleagues (rather than viewed as competition), and still get to contribute real work in the field in a private sector nonprofit instead. And I get to program too (in LS at least it was all publications, the software you created didnt count for anything.)