People have different experiences, since different universities, companies, fields, and groups between companies have wildly different social structures. Mine are closer to "D H"'s than there are to yours or eri's.
There's also a Bayesian selection effect. People that have better experiences in academia tend to end up in academia. People that have better experiences in industry, tend to end up in industry.
Andy Resnick said:
I've had at least 6 different job titles since grad school: Research Scientist, Senior Scientist, Engineer II, Instructor... something I have learned is that in terms of a career, any particular job title is meaningless.
That's not been my experience. Some titles are meaningless. Some are vital. In the military, it makes a big, big difference whether you are a corporal or a colonel. Some companies (i.e. investment banks) have military style ranks where you can't even attend a meeting if you don't have a given rank. Other companies go out of their way to avoid ranks (i.e. Bloomberg) does that.
In one situation, when the company offered me a package, I was able to negotiate a rank of Software Developer IV rather than Software Developer III. The reason that was important was that I knew how the HR system worked, and that if I was a low-paid Software Developer IV rather than a highly-paid Software Developer III then what would happen was that I'd get a huge raise in a year when everyone forgot about the negotiations. If I had tried to negotiate a higher salary then, I would have gotten resistance because the manager would have had to cover the salary from his budget, but the SDIV rank was "free" since it didn't come with any immediate salary increase.
Ranks turn out to be important in bureaucratic, hierarchical organizations. One thing that happens is that if you abolish formal ranks, then they come into being anyway.
Any time I started a new job I first had to prove myself to the more senior people- academia and industry are alike in that regard as well.
I've found things to be different in some critical ways...
1) The relationship is much more two-sided in the places I've worked. I have to prove myself to senior people, but they also have to prove themselves to me. When times are good (i.e. the dot-com boom), senior people will bend themselves backward to get skilled talent. When times are bad (i.e. now), the senior people have more power, but I've never seen the relationship as one sided as in academia.
This matters a lot. If you think that the senior managers are running your company into the ground, there isn't much you can do to change their behavior, so you can exercise the one real power you have and vote with your feet. So in the companies that I've worked for, it's more of a dialogue than in academia.
2) You have a middle layer of people in industry. The really senior people are off in the stratosphere somewhere, and you never see the CEO except in a ceremonial situation, and you never interact with them in any meaningful way. This means that you have a layer of middle managers, and you often have tension (and sometimes outright wars) between the people at the bottom and the senior management (see any Dilbert cartoon).
Also like industry, as one is promoted in academia, one's responsibilities and expectations increase: while promotion from assistant to associate generally requires that one stand above others at a national level of competition, promotion to full professor generally requires standing above others at an *international* level of competition. The full professors I know work harder, smarter, and better under more fractured conditions than I do.
It's very different in academia and industry. First of all, industry is usually not "up or out". In academia, you *must* be promoted or else you will be asked to leave. In industry, I've known people that have worked in the trenches for decades, and they don't *want* a promotion.
Part of it is it is often *not* the general situation in industry that the people at senior levels are smarter, more experienced, or more capable than the junior people. People at the lower levels tend to be more concerned with technical issues. People at the higher levels tend to be concerned more with personnel, strategy, and financial issues. One way of thinking about it is that the senior management team in a company are like orchestra conductors or movie producers. They have a particular skill, but you could be incompetent at playing a particular instrument.
At one company, I started with 100% technical. I got promoted so my work became 60% technical and 40% managerial, which was where I wanted to be. My boss was 25% technical, and her boss was 0% technical. At that point, I didn't *want* to get promoted.
Also in some high tech companies, the programmers make more money, have more status, and often have more real power than the managers. I've never seen a situation in which this has happened at the department level in academia.
One reason I wanted to get out of academia was that I loved being a graduate student, and I wanted to be one for the rest of my life (with some more money). In academia, you *can't* be a graduate student for the rest of your life, but in industry you can.
. But all joking aside, joyfulcynic made some good points. Though as I understand it, the large majority of researchers out there are not tenured (have a full professorship), as tenureship is becoming ever rarer. Most are research professors or associate professors...pretty much the same job but less job security.
