> Sure, I have customers to assist, servers to manage (not that they need much management), and business accounting to do; but professors equally have classes to teach, students to supervise, and committees to attend.
When I made this sort of comparison myself, my day job didn't seem quite so bad. I've seen a few different studies into how academics spend their time. Seems that full professors spend about 9-10 hours per week doing research, and that's working around 55 to 60 hours week in total. (The numbers vary depending on which study you look at.)
So, if you work 40 hours per week and then do 10 hours per week of research, in some sense you're doing better than someone who did things "right". As someone who just completed a PhD but was unable to get a research position, I'm keeping this in mind. (And, more importantly, I'm doing vauable research that would be hard to do in academia.)
The unstated assumption in my comment was that I want to do the research myself. As I have a PhD, I am of course aware that advising students is a core part of the job of most professors.
When I made this sort of comparison myself, my day job didn't seem quite so bad. I've seen a few different studies into how academics spend their time. Seems that full professors spend about 9-10 hours per week doing research, and that's working around 55 to 60 hours week in total. (The numbers vary depending on which study you look at.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180509023409/https://thebluere...
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/if-you-love-resear...
So, if you work 40 hours per week and then do 10 hours per week of research, in some sense you're doing better than someone who did things "right". As someone who just completed a PhD but was unable to get a research position, I'm keeping this in mind. (And, more importantly, I'm doing vauable research that would be hard to do in academia.)