Coincidentally I came across two posts from people I follow who recently transitioned outside academia. I first read Zinemin’s post who writes about working at a large financial corporation for the past 6 months:
I am not used to working in such an orderly and reasonable way. I feel like working like crazy on some days and not doing anything on others, like I am used to, but there is no reason to, I only rarely have deadlines and work is never exciting, there are no real breakthroughs, but also no disappointments, no rejected grant applications.
And then I read Doctor PMS’ post about her transition from academia to a sales position:
I love to talk about science and now I spend most of my time in the phone with researchers, trying to understand their work and helping them to find the right equipment for them.
And Biochembelle has a whole series of posts describing how she decided to leave academia and what it took to find the job she has now.