Worst Professor Ever

It’s been just over a year since I moved back to Austin. This was supposed to be an end-of-the-year post, but now it’s a beginning-of-the-year post.

Last month I helped a client who needed a website, STAT. The business was going to be mentioned in an industry publication, and we had three days.

To me, this was nowhere near an emergency. The information architecture was straightforward, the organizational demands not terribly taxing. It was basically like being told I had to prep a new multimedia lecture in three days – not easy, per se, but doable.

I don’t say this to demonstrate my personal awesomeness, I say it to highlight what academic life looks like to normal people. Even though I feel much more at home with my new life, there’s no escaping the previous ten years of crazy workplace fun.

This can be a benefit. As it turns out, the real world thinks I have an unusually high tolerance for “difficult”, “stressful”, and “time-consuming” work, because all of these are relative. My previous job description (running two classes and writing two articles and researching one book and coordinating countless meetings etc. etc.) means that if you want me to consider your project “complex” it had better be the Large Hadron Collider.

On good days, coming from a culture where you get complicated shit done, without asking for any help, without complaining, and without recognition, means I look like freaking genius while simultaneously appearing totally humble. (Neither of those is true, obviously, it’s an optical illusion.)

That’s after I get the job, though. Interviews can lead to bad days.  It’s not polite to say, “You think this job will be challenging? HAHAHAHAHAHA.” Also, people keep asking me how I prefer to work and what framework I like to use, which strikes me as hilarious because my attitude is, “I actually don’t care because I’m not the boss. Why don’t you tell me what you want done and how you’d like me to do it, and I’ll do that and if I haven’t used X software to do it, I’ll learn how.” I’m finding that doesn’t go over well, either – the problem being that when I think something is hilarious, it kind of shows.

Anyway, for the benefit of anyone in transition or thinking about transition, I thought I’d document some of the more interesting comparisons, in random categories you may or may not care about.

Number of Jobs and Your Chance of Getting One

Real world wins big time. Granted, I’m in the right industry and Austin is an employment hotspot – but, because so many people are moving here, the market is pretty darned saturated. No one’s getting a job right away, or without working at it. I had to network my ass off for the better part of a year, which wasn’t exactly my favorite thing in the world.

Still, there are new jobs posted every day on Craigslist. Companies are hiring. It’s competitive but doable, and the hiring timelines are nowhere near as ridiculous as the academic ones.  Plus, no one’s asking me to move to Idaho for a wage that is literally not enough to live on.

Working at Home

The real world is still kind of stuck on eight-hour days and a lot of bosses are uncomfortable with employees working in places that aren’t the office. Most developers, on the other hand,  just want to be left the hell alone while doing their programming, hence the interesting paradigm shift that’s going on right now, and the rise of co-working spaces.

I admit, when you tell me I’m going to be productive while spending hours in an office teeming with spastic twenty-year-olds, it’s hard for me not to laugh out loud at you. And Garann Means wrote a great post on why your office isn’t the “magical productivity land” you think it is, no matter how many soft drinks you offer.

So – surprise! – academia wins in this category; it’s been running a meetings-based, work-at-home culture for centuries. NB, real-world employers, it’s totally possible.

Work/Life Balance

This one’s very subjective. A half-hour commute each way plus lunch can make a typical office job ten hours a day. That seems pretty ridiculous to me, and to a growing number of people (see above). And sadly, academia is on the forefront of what big companies are doing anyway, demanding ever more time and tasks from salaried workers. For me, the real world still wins, though, for one reason:

Talking About Things Other than Work

Sure, if you go to a developer meetup everybody wants to talk about work crap, but that’s why I don’t go to “social” events which are actually more work. Because of that, in the last year I’ve met more varieties of people than I met in TEN YEARS of academia. Also, the people at work talk about movies and other stuff that isn’t work. Go real world.

Pay and Other Rewards

Because of the oversaturated market and tons of college graduates, Austin’s jobs pay a little lower than the national average. In a year, I’ve got from being offered 40k to 50k (or the equivalent hourly rate), which together averaged out to what I was already making in academia after seven years of training and five years of work. And if you head towards finance, marketing and advertising, you’ll find salaries are generally higher, whatever your job title. And even the lowest-paying social media jobs run about 30k. Granted, there’s a growing reliance on part-time, no-benefits jobs – once again, academia is ahead of the curve – but at least we’re talking just enough to live on, unlike most adjunct postitions.

As for the non-financial rewards, I enjoy helping my clients and making things work for my co-workers. Unlike my students, they’re actually asking for help and therefore are more likely to listen to whatever advice I’m giving them. And they pay me for it. And I’m sorry, but after ten years and negligible 401k, it’s far more rewarding than lecturing bored students who don’t want to be there.

Tolerance for Marketing of Self and Others

This may seem like a weird category, but I once got accused of “prostituting” the humanities so it’s an area of concern for me. I am happy to report that in the outside world, PR and marketing are fine. So fine, in fact, that personally I think we’ve moved into the danger zone where advertising now thinks it’s providing “information” to consumers. But at least the all the favor-giving is far more blatant, whereas in academia there was a need to pretend it wasn’t happening at all. (Because we all know meritocracy works there.  HAHAHAHAHA.)

Overspecialization, Pigeonholing and General Problem of “Not Looking” Like…

This is a tie, for reasons that I find hilarious. Academia prizes overspecialization, on the one hand, insisting that you focus solely on Post-Dynastic Hessian rugmakers and getting huffy if you try to “study” anything else. But at the same time, you’re expected to be a classroom manager, training specialist, author, researcher, proofreader, editor, user experience designer, public speaker, graphic designer, etc. etc. whatever your current situation demands, ASAP, no questions asked. Like if you turned The Running Man into a DIY Network reality show.

The outside world claims it prizes generalists – every job wants soft skills, claims it wants people to think outside the box, and talks about “wearing many hats.” Yet even companies who claim they’re hiring for “talent” can’t deal with this in reality. It usually comes down to whether you’ve already had experience with their specific kind of software or whatever; they may claim they want potential, but it’s rarely true.

So both are lying through their teeth. Also, I don’t, apparently, look like a developer any more than a professor. Oh, well.

Overall Happiness

I won’t lie to you, transitions are hard. There have been many points in the last year when I’ve been freaking out about money, which sucked - after grad school, I swore I’d never do that again, but it’s really just unavoidable when you simultaneously change locations and careers. On the flip side, I’m choosing the place I live, the people I work with, etc. I don’t regret it for a moment, and I’m definitely, qualitatively happier than I ever was in academia. Which is all that matters, really.