Not a teacher but know a few well. The professional culture of teachers tends to flow downward from ed schools, and is pretty different from the professional c

Not a teacher but know a few well. The professional culture of teachers tends to flow downward from ed schools, and is pretty different from the professional culture of programmers. If you think of a tech company and then roughly invert the proportions of engineers vs. office managers and HR, you will have some sense of it. To first order, it will be a lot less autonomy than you're probably used to, and at a much more concrete level of direction. There is a sharp delta in the amount of paperwork, sometimes understandably and sometimes not. An admin that will run interference for you on those fronts, or simply not interfere with you, can make a big difference in QoL points. "I teach for free and they pay me to do the rest of the job [of which there is an awful lot]" is a pretty common sentiment. I had some very good teachers for whom I'm grateful. In retrospect, they gave up a lot in order to teach. Best of luck with your decision.