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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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].

I gave hundreds of hours to teaching, only for pennies, and I'm still very grateful for that opportunity in my life.

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.

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]

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.

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 :)

[0]: http://www.lulu.com/shop/simone-brunozzi/dispense-lab-lingua...

[1]: http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazon.com...