That's true, but I don't believe the vibrancy of philosophy 30 or 40 years ago would play much of a factor in professional philosophers' current job/life satisf

That's true, but I don't believe the vibrancy of philosophy 30 or 40 years ago would play much of a factor in professional philosophers' current job/life satisfaction. They would probably need to see lots of great work being done over the past two or five years, or at most ten years, to feel excited about the state of their profession. (With some variation based on specialty, e.g., a professor of ancient philosophy probably wouldn't care as much about recent activity as a specialist in modern analytic philosophy, who in turn would probably care less than a philosopher of science.)