emotional responses - What makes academic failure different from failure in another career?

It is my understanding that academia as a nebulous whole has its own culture and speaks its own language that makes it a very different environment to work in compared to other so-called "industry" jobs.

Indeed, my own supervisor once referred to a former student of his as "having a job", meaning that she now works outside of academia. It's clear that for him, like many other academics, academia (or maybe their own particular field of research) is a vocation or calling, rather than a job.

My question, therefore, is this: why, within the culture of academia, is failure seen or felt to be different from failure in another career? What is special about academia that makes missing out on a postdoc or permanent job so different from missing out on any other industry job?

The question that inspired this one: How to deal with unavoidable failure? which asks how to deal with not being selected for a tenure-track job.

Answer

I think the reason is simply that a lot of people go into academia with the, often unrealistic, goal of becoming a professor. No matter the circumstances, if you don't get to the point where you want to be, well, you can call it a failure, can't you?

This is aggravated by the pyramid structure of academia, where there are fewer positions available for every stage of the career, and most early-career positions are temporary. So you are statistically unlikely to reach your goal in the first place, and if you don't manage to do it during the standard time period, well, going to e.g. industry is your best bet. Outside of academia, on the other hand, if you don't get that managerial promotion or raise this time, maybe there's another chance coming a couple of years down the line. And you can keep working on similar things in the meantime.

So, the 'failure' in industry is likely less permanent, causing less anxiety. On top of that, you have the survivorship bias due to those who got their permanent positions. It affects the academic atmosphere, and can influence what is seen as success and failure. This is also affected by the field: Compare say petroleum engineering and mathematics PhD candidates, and you'll likely see different attitudes about private jobs.