I work with academic teams all the time. I think it is unfair to say they work less. Some academics work many more hours than the software engineers I manage.

I work with academic teams all the time. I think it is unfair to say they work less. Some academics work many more hours than the software engineers I manage. What they do have is different priorities. Your company is product focused while the academic might have courses to teach, grade, and prep. They have students to advise, researchers teams to manage, papers to write guest lectures to present, tenure cases to review, 3rd party research to vet, service commitments to their institutions... The list goes on and on. Most productive academics are essentially CEOs of their own mini startups. So, with any team member or external partner, you need to set clear expectations and timelines. Otherwise your ask will fall someplace on their timeline that likely "six weeks from now after the term ends and grading is done"