From a computer vision perspective. If you get a paper into CVPR, or SIGGRAPH, or NeurIPS, it has the potential to make your career. It's that important to some employers (academic and not) and that's why everyone struggles to publish in those "top" venues. It's not like you won't have a career without a paper in these places (I really want to stress this), but it's enough of a boost to your reputation that everyone wants to.

Think of it like getting a Nature or Science paper, or something in Phys Rev, or Cell. It's about prestige.

The real issue is conferences taking the place of academic journals. In most fields conferences are laid back places to share your WIP. In CS, conferences require full papers which means many ML researchers (for example) structure their whole year around meeting the NeurIPS and ICML/ICLR deadlines. It's a bit broken because those conferences have limited capacity and it can be a lottery if you get in. Journals don't have the same restriction and don't have deadlines unless you're going for a special issue, so you can actually take the time to polish before submitting.

I did not work in the hottest topics in Machine Learning (and not in computer vision) as I cannot find rooms for innovation. I did publish several papers in 2nd-tier conferences and submit papers to journals. Near the end of my graduation, I started to find jobs in the industry. I have been shocked when I saw some employers will target authors who published in these big conferences even for non-research positions. (It sounds like discrimination.) I always wonder if my research profile will meet their requirements.

When I was hiring in industry for computer vision, by the end I honestly didn't even look at people's publications. GitHub, any skills they list, and examples of projects they worked on. What got published at the end seemed to have no impact on what was important for industry.

> it has the potential to make your career.

This is true, but I think for many researchers the main motivation is self-esteem. It's the way they are ranked among their peers. In other circles, it may be your bonus, or how fast you run a marathon. It may be seem silly but this is what drives many researchers.

You aren't fired - sorry you can't get fired from a tenure job - you don't get paid peanuts to fund research.

A 6 figure job with excellent benefits that you can hold until you die, along with discount tuition for your family. Not a bad gig even with all the administrative bullshit professors are saddled with these days.

Post-tenure? Peer-recognition & Funding.