After 20 in years in corporate as a Linux and Unix sysadmin/engineer, I took an over 30% paycut for a position as a Linux systems engineer at a major west coast university. I was tired of the corporate whoredom, the Fortune 500 company I'd been with for the past ten years is doing a huge, sad, public implosion, and I wanted to go somewhere and do something where I could make a difference. I was very excited about helping researchers and grad students make a difference in the world.

One month in, I knew it was a mistake. Staff meeting were spent insulting and gossiping about those researchers and grad students. My manager/the department director, a uni lifer, was constantly offering to have the person I replaced come back to show me how to do things (this, despite my having seen, and fixed, his less-than-competent work; both unstable system configurations and dependably-buggy code). My first one-on-one meeting with my manager (less 'director' than 'low level people manager with aspirations') was as my 90-day review, where I was berated for my criticism of said predecessor's buggy code and lack of knowledge of standard practices, my failure to 'lead' other sysadmins in projects, and my poor note-taking in meetings. At five months, I was told that my six month probationary period was ending, and he was choosing to not renew me because he felt that I would not be able to rise to a leadership position where I would be able to meet with researchers and bring new projects into the 'organization'. This was the first i had heard of this expectation--I was placed at a desk in the back corner of a room and essentially ignored for five months. I was shown my job description prior to my 90-day review in an email under the heading "performance goals", and I have not, to this day, been given any measurable, objective performance goals or defined expectations for my position.

I have, of course, been told that in my last 30 days I am to design and develop a high performance computing cluster capable of parallel processing and R (my mockup, using Open Grid Scheduler and CentOS on five virtual machines, was completed in less than a week), as well as being told precisely when I am to be at my desk, when I can take breaks, and how I am to handle my job hunt while working. My position has been reposted, at a higher salary than I was offered.

If you love technology, avoid working in academia. I would wholeheartedly recommend my university as a place to learn. I would tell anyone who wants to work here to run as far and as fast as you can. The internal politics are appalling, and the work environment is the most deeply dysfunctional I've seen in 20 years...and I once worked for a company owned by a cokehead who kept an open bottle of whisky on his desk and talked during staff meetings in graphic detail about his sexual habits with his wife and other women who weren't his wife.

You are talking about President Eisenhower and he added it to the anthem. Now...if you are such a militant atheist that you will get your panties in a twist about "under god" in a damned song

Really? And here I thought it was the Pledge of Allegiance, not the National Anthem. Which pretty much invalidates your whole post.

Oh, and if you're really such a fan of freedom, perhaps you should be concerned that not only does our country have a loyalty oath, but it refers to a specific deity. If objecting to the invocation of the christian deity in the state loyalty oath makes me a militant atheist, well, count me in.