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There's a difference between money for the university and money for yourself. I think the poster was trying to point out that taking an academic job is not the

There's a difference between money for the university and money for yourself. I think the poster was trying to point out that taking an academic job is not the path to riches. For example, I made more at around five years in to working at Microsoft than I will as a professor unless I manage to make full professor at a top university _and_ run my own lab. Undergraduate starting salaries in this field, from top-tier institutions, are still far above assistant faculty salaries, despite ~8 years less education (a post-doctoral stint is basically mandatory to even get a faculty position interview at this point). So, even if I made the very top tier of my field and stayed there until senility sets in, it's questionable whether I could ever make up for the lost wages during my re-education. And that's assuming I had never gotten another raise beyond inflation, ever. At least in CS, you don't go into academia for the money.

Estragon 14y ago
I think it's terrific that you're making choices based on what really interests you, rather than optimizing your income. You're obviously the kind of person pclark was talking about, and that's admirable. I do think, though, that if the institution's executive goals are more along the lines of "make money" while an individual's are more "do cool stuff to change the world," he or she is setting himself up for an enduring conflict which can be hard to negotiate, or even to keep track of at times, because the institution will have so much influence over their life.