This is something that's common in academia. Professors often get contract work due to their credentials and social perception as "experts". You can get work do

This is something that's common in academia. Professors often get contract work due to their credentials and social perception as "experts". You can get work doing credential evaluation, jury consulting, advising startups, consulting on industry projects, etc. These arrangements are so common we have policies around them - usually you can spend an average of 1 day per week doing these activities. Faculty then put this work and how much they made in their yearly reviews. Administration wants to make sure that being a member of the faculty is your primary job, but they actually want you to go out and do these activities because it helps their brand. I think the arrangement works for everyone, and hope something like this could be replicated in the corporate sector. Edit: (Maybe this would be hard to replicate in the corporate sector because thinking about it more, being a faculty member is closer to being a contractor than an employee in some ways important to making this arrangement work. Faculty aren't really managed like an employee at a software company; their time is their own except for their course schedules that are assigned. But otherwise they are much more free to arrange their schedules)