----- Original Message ----- yeah. i usually have to leave the room when i hear some academic whining about their horrid work hours, how haaaaaard it is, etc. etc. please! academia may require a lot of hours, but 9 times out of 10, they are hours of your own making - and often of your own fucking around. ---------
A lot of what you say about hi tech, especially about managing people whose work you don't understand. But that is definitely a universal management problem.
My own experience is that when I was teaching, I felt like I was working 24/7, and when I went back to technical writing, it was more like a thirty hour work week at worst. Part of the reason for this is because I really cared about teaching. But the other thing I hated about working conditions in academia is that 1) it was always a horse race and 2) the judgement of people I really cared about, the students, didn't matter at all. My work would be judged by my colleagues in terms of whatever critical fad was uppermost, so if you weren't into that fad, you were fucked.
J