> I've done my time both in academia and in professional (mostly IT) circles.
Likewise. But . . .
> Now, in IT, performance matters. The program has to work; the
> documentation has to be accurate and complete. If you really are an idiot,
> it will show, and you will be fired. Unless you're in the upper levels of
> management, where it doesn't matter.
I can't agree with this kind of generalization about the organizations as somehow intrinsically meritocratic on account of the content or type of work. Shag probably has many more stories of professionally produced — and well paid — crap code than I have, even if it "works" (one is tempted to make a crack about Vista, but I will stop at expressing the temptation), or of people getting by on less than stellar work, but my own anecdotal experience doesn't gibe with yours, apparently.
Indeed, I get dead tired listening to academics talk about how much more "rational" the "business world" is, because these people not doing their jobs would be fired. Leaving aside the politics of that position, it's just plain false.
And in my experience, there are plenty of academics, though probably not most, who never imagined themselves as courtiers. That said, I will agree with you that it's pretty difficult to look at university teaching romantically these days. We are part of a compromised institutional structure, that mainly sells its customers [sic] a bill of goods, and that we have to fight against in order to do what we really want to do. Which for most of us was not to be court advisor to barack obama. although i admit there are plenty of those, too.
I got nothin', really.
j