[jakobe]

Concerning the workload: As far as I'm concerned, the academic workload is definitely not all-consuming. From watching my colleagues, I came to the conclusion that everybody chooses their own workload. Some of my coworkers come at 9AM and leave at 4PM; others think they absolutely must finish that experiment and stay until 10PM. Some people think they must immediately rush to the lab if their supervisor sends them an email on Saturday afternoon; others just ignore the email until Monday morning.

I have never heard of anybody getting into trouble for turning their computer off on the weekend, or working normal hours; I think much of the pressure is self-inflicted.

Personally, I currently work in academia (doing my PhD), and I run a profitable business on the side (selling my own software). Sometimes this is a bit stressful (when you have to prepare a talk and keep getting emails from customers because of a nasty bug you introduced in the last release), but most of the time this works out just fine.

[lutorm]

I think much of the pressure is self-inflicted.

This is true, but that doesn't make it less stressful. It's self-inflicted in the sense that the pressure running a startup is self-inflicted: you are competing with a bunch of other highly skilled individuals for a fixed slice of cake and if you want to be one of the successful ones you need to out-compete the others. The fact that no one forces you to work isn't really relevant.

[sunahsuh]

Seconded. Some of the most successful academics I know keep regular 9-5 hours and leave their work at the office, have spouses and children, etc. I've noticed a lot of them are fantastic at time-boxing and that some of my less successful colleagues aren't so much, and the freedom the academic schedule gives them ends up being more of a hindrance than a help.

[slug]

Are those tenured professors that have their grad studends and post-docs do all the work for them ? :)

[sunahsuh]

Haha, nope, lots of PhD students and junior profs that have their act together.