This is dependent on what field you're in and where you graduate from, of course. CS is less heavy on postdocs [1] and I'm biased by only having had the experie

This is dependent on what field you're in and where you graduate from, of course. CS is less heavy on postdocs [1] and I'm biased by only having had the experience of top-tier schools. As a tenure track professor, you don't really answer to many people. You have to beg for money (grants), constantly prove yourself (publications), and always be recruiting (students). Of course you also have to teach classes, do community service, and participate in department politics and initiatives. I'm not counting these as "answering to people," however, because none of them involve someone telling you to do something. They're all activities you must decide to do yourself, and then it's completely up to you how to do them. Is this what you meant by answering to lots of people, or something else? The relevant academic joke is: "It's the best job ever! You can do whatever you want with your 80 hour weeks!" [1] In CS, from my experience, postdocing is usually a 1-year "reset your brain" time before taking an academic job. I know in other fields it's often a mandatory many-year grunt-work experience.