Leaving academia for industry: 7 years later

Zachary Ernst, former Associate Professor at University of Missouri-Columbia now working in the tech industry, has a really interesting new post at Medium entitled, "Leaving Academia for the Private Sector: Seven Years Later". (H/t Mark Barber) Here are few choice passages:

To my great surprise, I discovered that business is actually interesting! Coming up with the right strategy for growing the business, collecting the right data about the company’s performance, understanding the larger challenges in the market, evaluating the competition’s strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how to differentiate yourself from your more entrenched competitors — all of this turns out to be fascinating. In fact, I usually find it to be more interesting and challenging than my previous academic work in philosophy. Personally, I’m shocked to find myself reading articles from McKinsey & Company or the Harvard Business Review in my spare time. But I often do, and they’re just as interesting as anything in an academic journal....

My move out of academia has spared me the pain that faculty are enduring now that the financial state of the university system is spiraling downward....

I have literally never wished, for even one second, that I’d stayed in academia. My professional life is more interesting, more impactful, and more lucrative than it used to be. Based on the number of questions from current faculty I receive on a near-weekly basis, I expect that my own career trajectory will be much more common in the near future.

Comments

[DS]

I'm glad that Zachary Ernst is statisfied with his career change, but I think it is wishful thinking that certain fields are immune from economic downturns. The future is unpredictable.

I am sure that some faculty are feeling quite secure right now; others not so much. The same thing is true of many industries I would guess.