And everyone uses Ghidra exclusively where I work. I'd say we're a serious operation

This is changing, Ghidra is increasingly replacing IDA for commercial work.

Cracking IDA yourself was, and maybe still is, a "rite of passage" in certain communities.

I recommend it for serious work. Well, serious enough that I got paid for doing it, and/or given talks about it.

(not if you're only doing x86/ARM stuff, though)

Agree. IDA is surely the “primary” tool for anything that runs on an OS on a common arch, but once you get into embedded Ghidra is heavily used for serious work and once you get to heavily automation based scenarios or obscure microarchitectures it’s the best solution and certainly a “serious” product used by “real” REs.

The NSA doesn't do serious work?

That wasn't the claim. Ability + interest + time + budget + ... are what makes a serious tool.