I spent much of the first 15 years of my career at companies that would rather ship crappy software tomorrow than good software next week. The stress level was high because we were always in a rush, and management always was always pushing to get more out of every developer, like wringing the last drop of juice from an orange before they threw it out.
We often worked overtime so we could write the code we were assigned to write. We couldn't do that during office hours because office hours were for meetings, answering email, and fixing bugs in the crappy code we pushed out last week. Because last week's code was counted as "done," fixing it didn't count as "progress." We weren't getting anywhere unless we produced something new, and that only happened after hours.
A few years ago, I started working at a university in the US, where things move much more slowly. I started having the time to properly architect software, to rewrite chunks of code when necessary, and to write much more thorough tests so I'd have fewer surprises when we got to production. The saner pace and the ability to be thorough made the work enjoyable again.
The academic world in general tends to move more slowly and cautiously than the start-up world, and that academic mindset creeps into even the non-academic parts of the university. The go-slow-and-be-right attitude is good for designing and building complex systems.
That said, universities are a mixed bag. Get into the wrong department, and you might find yourself maintaining crappy software that no for-profit enterprise would ever run. You might find yourself in even more meetings, with more politics, about things that matter even less.
But if you manage to find a decent project with a decent manager, the university can give you back your work-life balance, along with some of your sanity. You'll even find a little extra energy to put into your side projects, because the job hasn't wrung you dry.
We often worked overtime so we could write the code we were assigned to write. We couldn't do that during office hours because office hours were for meetings, answering email, and fixing bugs in the crappy code we pushed out last week. Because last week's code was counted as "done," fixing it didn't count as "progress." We weren't getting anywhere unless we produced something new, and that only happened after hours.
A few years ago, I started working at a university in the US, where things move much more slowly. I started having the time to properly architect software, to rewrite chunks of code when necessary, and to write much more thorough tests so I'd have fewer surprises when we got to production. The saner pace and the ability to be thorough made the work enjoyable again.
The academic world in general tends to move more slowly and cautiously than the start-up world, and that academic mindset creeps into even the non-academic parts of the university. The go-slow-and-be-right attitude is good for designing and building complex systems.
That said, universities are a mixed bag. Get into the wrong department, and you might find yourself maintaining crappy software that no for-profit enterprise would ever run. You might find yourself in even more meetings, with more politics, about things that matter even less.
But if you manage to find a decent project with a decent manager, the university can give you back your work-life balance, along with some of your sanity. You'll even find a little extra energy to put into your side projects, because the job hasn't wrung you dry.