Comment by trod1234

I know a person that did this, 25+ years in industry.

He was forced into retirement after half a decade of what sounded like tortured politics, gross mismanagement and fiscal waste.

Many times they said they wanted something, he would do the legwork, collect requirements, and put up preliminary PoC, it would be approved, but then they scrap it at a cost of hundreds of thousands only 6 months later and then go with the 2nd outside vendor at a greater cost doing half of what was asked with 4x more people required on staff.

It turns out the first outside vendor was lied to initially by the Administration, they asked for and reviewed the existing work already done, and said they couldn't match or do better for the locked in budget amount already paid which met the needs they asked for, but ultimately didn't use at all. This almost never happens.

Those people who initially got hired as a result of that, were laid off within 1-2 years, and the work fell to helpdesk (without the resources).

The last few years they removed the various positions he had started with, eventually throwing him on helpdesk in-person and on the phones when they laid off the student/staff helpdesk people.

This was following Covid, and he was in that 90% fatality band of age demographics related to Covid, and they still forced him to in-person work.

In many areas, there is a large gap between needing something, and getting something. They may have a need, but they don't have the demand, and that's a structural issue that only gets worse over time until it fails and must be rebuilt from scratch.

Its really telling about these type of employment structures when the public data is known and shows certain age groups are at extreme risk, and they choose to put their workers in harms way anyway.

Given the many horror stories I've heard through the grapevine about academia (over decades), as well as the experiences that confirm many of those stories;

Sure there is a great need but through decades of scandals, mismanagement, and crises they've burnt the bridges and have a rightfully earned infamous level of notoriety.

The reason the need is so high is because they largely can't find anyone willing to subject themselves to that level of organizational malice.

The competent people won't even bother applying because there is no amount of money they would trade for their personal sanity.