Not 100% related, but in 2004-2006 I was an entrepreneur in Italy, AND a full professor at a local university, teaching "Compilers and Programming Languages Lab" to students only a few years younger than me.<p>For some reason, the budget for a full professorship (not permanent, but only 1-year long) was meager, I think it was ~1,600 Euros for the whole year. As a consequence, the usual corrupted nominations didn't happen for this one, and I ended up being selected among one or two other candidates with a similar curriculum as mine (which, to be honest, wasn't particularly strong on Compilers stuff).<p>When I found out I was assigned that professorship, few weeks before the start of the course, I spent time preparing the material and studying a lot more, as I felt my preparation needed some beefing up.<p>The text book, the (in) famous Dragon book, was available only at 150 Euros, more than 4 times the average cost of a textbook back then, and it contained way too much information for that course. I then decided to create content specific for that course, and to release it with a creative commons license.<p>It was the first time in that University (year 2004) that a professor released content under Creative Commons, and that content was available online, and that it was free.<p>I might not have been the best professor on the planet, but I felt really proud of that. The beauty of internet is that, 14 or so years later, you can still find that content somewhere [0].<p>I gave hundreds of hours to teaching, only for pennies, and I'm still very grateful for that opportunity in my life.<p>End of the story (assuming you're curious now) is that two years later a proper budget was allocated, and of course I was not renewed. Someone with much more political clout and influence was selected, as it usually happens in Italy.<p>I decided that the academic world was not for me. I pursued a career in the private sector, and 2-3 years later I landed a job at Amazon Web Services, and left Italy. [1]<p>Ten years later, I know for sure that being an academic would have not made me happy. I would have not been able to stand the bureaucracy, or the defined and determined career path.<p>I wish, though, that I had the opportunity to teach someone a bit closer to my passions (e.g. Databases). That's a little regret left in me :)<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab-linguaggi-di-programmazione-e-compilatori-informatica-unipgit/paperback/product-484250.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lulu.com/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab-lingua...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazon.com...</a>