I had brief stints in state and county government doing policy work, and I remember a piece of advice for how you want to do work like Marks': you want to be high enough in goverment that you can make an impact, work with interesting problems in the real world – but not high enough that you get affected by regular changes in elected leadership, with eventually reverberate down the hierarchy. But in public service the compensation for doing good work is really just the ability to do more of that work, without being bothered too much about having to accumulate a fat CV (either in academia or industry).

I'm glad he found his niche, and managed to survive so many administrative rehousings.