Profiling

In a discussion today the subject of working at a university came up. I think his perception was that it's a slow-paced environment that lags behind private sector.

I can see how this would be a common perception. Things aren't as formal as they are in private sector and quite often things do seem to happen far more slowly. On the other hand, there are some lessons that can be gleaned from higher education. Some of the things I enjoyed the most about it:

• dynamic--there are LOTS of different things going on, subjects are being researched in depth that many people are not even aware but can make a difference in the world
• methodical--so many decisions are made by committees and organizations; yes, things often take time but they are typically well thought out and alternatives are explored; ideally, a balance between snap decisions and thoughtful decisions is ideal
  
• lack of formality--obviously there are pros and cons to both sides of this, one thing I can say is that even though the university at which I worked was not very formal, most people were emphatic about their quality of work
• cerebral--a university is a microcosm full of highly educated and very interesting individuals; just being in a meeting with the faculty can be fascinating
• many technology aspects are very quick to implement and there are many early adopters--at the university at which I worked, most of our IT group and many users were eager to test and implement the latest version of Windows, Office, Exchange, Blackberry devices, Apple's OS, Creative Suite, etc. Of course we had our share of people who were slow to embrace new technology. I was in a meeting this year with one of our managers who said he didn't want to program in something like C#, Ruby, or AJAX because it's not tried and true yet, but he was the exception. In many private sector organizations the notion of implementing Vista or Office 2007 is a couple of years out. There are lots of good reasons for that but there's surprisingly little interest from IT or the users in many private sector environments.
• it's for a great cause--few things can be considered more noble than helping to educate students. As I would occasionally remind my team, our job, as employees of the university, is to help educate students
  

I'm not able to say that I prefer one environment over the other, there are things I like and dislike about both but I can say that many of the stereotypes are misplaced. I think my time between the two environments has served me well and gives me a good perspective and the ability to implement the best of both worlds.