http://web.archive.org/web/20120201172033/http://www.math.ha...
But, he rambles a lot on there and weighs the pros and cons of being a professor in Hawaii. Basically, though, his final sentence says it all: "I've got to get out of this place."
Some more about his salary he keeps talking about, " Unfortunately, though, the one thing at the University of Hawaii that was not under my control, nor under the Math Department's either, whether by ``shibai'' or otherwise, was my salary. I had known when I accepted the position here that I was being offered a salary that was too low, but what I had not realized was that, unlike Kansas, faculty salaries at the University of Hawaii are controlled by a rigid civil-service structure, so that the salary one is hired at determines one's salary for the rest of one's life. But added to that, the nation soon entered an extremely drastic phase of Reaganomics inflation, and the State of Hawaii responded by giving only minimal salary raises (0% one year and 2% the following), and the entire faculty here at UH was becoming financially desperate.
One of the reasons I dropped out of active mathematical research was a realization (even before Reagan came into office in 1981) that it would soon no longer be financially feasible for me to continue working here. And as I stopped letting my life be taken over by doing research, and after being promoted to full professor had finally jumped through all the hoops that young academics (although I was no longer exactly young) are require to jump through, more and more I was asking myself exactly what it was that I want out of life, and to what extent my career as a mathematician was providing it. "
He also mentioned before about thinking about becoming an actuary; and, how another math professor started taking electrical engineering courses at the university and later left for California to become an engineer in the aerospace industry (which turned out to be poor timing since the aerospace industry went under major turmoil in California during the late 80's).
Then he talks about how he has a strong distaste for living in Hawaii here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120218124307/http://www2.hawaii...
It gives a very intimate perspective from a man who has lived the life of being an academic, and what that entails. I don't recommend reading his entire web site, since he writes quite a lot. But, for anyone interested in academia, I think a perusal is in order. He does talk a lot about what life being an "institutionalized" academic is like. It's pretty sad, and it made me realized I would never want to get into that field.