Sorry for the delayed answer. We're on China time here :) For me, it's mostly teaching, but even "extreme" amounts of teaching as a lecturer amounts to about 15

Sorry for the delayed answer. We're on China time here :) For me, it's mostly teaching, but even "extreme" amounts of teaching as a lecturer amounts to about 15 hours of classes per week. Compared with my 60 weekly working hours as a developer, this is almost perpetual holiday. Of course, there are exams to grade, lecture notes to write, and such. Also, you need to publish stuff in academic journals, and this is quite hard sometimes, because there are only limited amounts of journals in which everyone has to publish, so the competition can be fierce. Contracts are fixed-term for the lower ranks, so if you are unlucky, you can easily find yourself out of work every two years or so. So it has advantages (less stress, nicer work, more freedom), and disadvantages (unsafe job, cut-throat competition, generally less money) compared to IT.