I use rust for work, and yeah, the compiler is slow, and that reduces the number of change / compile / test cycles I can do. But rust isn't the only slow part of my work, and some days, it's not even the slowest part of my work.
I've used other languages and environments with faster cycles, and I feel more productive and happy, but working isn't usually about maximizing my feelings of productivity and happiness, so there you go.
I've also worked with plenty of mainstream languages and environments that were about as bad or worse. You just adapt and post on HN while the compile / deploy is running, rather than getting things done quickly. I suspect compile times will improve at some point, perhaps when I get twice the number of cores; a lot of times software expands to fill the growing hardware, but my work project is well scoped and not likely to expand that much.