Misperceptions of academia

So I got a comment from someone thinking about making the academia to industry move, and two other people emailed me a couple weeks ago asking about industry. So, since I have free time because spending time with extended family gets tiresome, I thought I'd write about my decision. I was planning on writing about my industry job search later on, too, since I started this blog about my academia search. 

Science_seeker posted a comment with a link on someone else's experience with the academia-industry-academia lifestyles. The link is here if you're interested: http://www.the-aps.org/mm/Careers/Mentor/Career-Choices-and-Planning/Early-Career-Professional/Considering-a-change-in-career-/Transitions-Between-Academia-and-Industry

At the end of the article the author had a set of questions related to the article to get you thinking about which path you'd like more. I thought I'd write the article around the questions to explain my thought process on jumping to academia; then add a little tidbit at the end:

1. What type of environment do you thrive in?
   I thrive in a fun environment.  And, trust me, I have fun in every environment, but I have far more fun when given freedom.  The freedom is the biggest part.  I have a lot of freedom in my current work, but ultimately, the projects I propose and am put in charge of must be aligned with the company goals.  I decided to work for my particular company because they work on the physiologic system I specialized in, although a completely different part of it.  So I'm still intellectually constipated because I can't branch as much.  My company is a very large one, so I can move to different divisions, but again, I'd be stuck in the types of products that will make money right now and focused on one type of pathology.
   1. Do you like to work independently or as part of a team?
      Why do these have to be mutually exclusive?  As an advisor, aren't you just the captain of a team of very 'green' scientists/engineers?  In industry, I'm surrounded with people more on my level.  This seems like a good point to go off topic: I started off in a standard R&D job, and moved up every 6-12 months 1-2 levels per promotion.  I am currently, the lead engineering scientist for two project of the six of my company's medical product pipeline.  We do a lot of clinically directed science and use clinical need to guide medical device design.  My budget is ~$2 million per year, nonsalary...so just supplies, since salary comes out of a different cost structure.  The products my group come out with are estimated to be responsible for 80% of the company's billion dollar earnings. This is nice because while there's no grant writing, I still have to go to customers, shareholders, and leadership to pitch ideas and get money. And pitching ideas and arguing is something I get off on.  Similar to grants, just less competition, but still a ton of politics.  My experience differs from the article's experience in that I don't only see a small part of the project.  I primarily focus on specialized parts, but I see everything, and reap the benefits or consequences of substandard work (which there isn't much of, but it's still there).  The team approach is definitely there, but I had it in grad school...just different.  Talking to academics, they seemed to agree, in that it's up to your advising strategy whether to instigate a team-based problem-solving environment.  Even in grad school, I worked primarily on my stuff, with some team input from collaborators, undergrads, and even other grad students.  I'll throw in tidbits from my current position throughout the post.
   2. Do you want to run your own lab and be the decision maker or would you prefer to have a boss who directs the research?
      I want to make the calls.  I get to make a lot of calls currently, then pitch said decisions to different internal boards, but they're still my decisions.  The difference is in the freedom of what I can explore.  I have ideas outside of the core specialty of my company (we're a market leader) that I want to pursue.  When other people are directing the research, I often disagree with direction, and because I'm in a position of semi-leadership, a mis-step by management and subsequent medical device market failure will hurt me immensely.  If I fail, I want to own it.  But moreso, I have a ton of ideas and would love to work on them. 
2. Do you want to work on a particular biological system or question? If you could no longer work on this system, would you be happy?
   I'm sure I could be happy.  I got into my field because I love the work.  But I have waaaaaay more fun when I get to work on what I want. I'm sure our non-biology brother and sister scientists have corollaries to their specializations, as well, that they'd prefer to keep focus on. 
3. Do you want to write grants?
   My lab in grad school was dirt-poor at first.  I wrote fellowship grant applications to several agencies and luckily was able to self-fund myself AND my research throughout my 4.5 years.  For these fellowships, they went through typical grant cycles: 8-12 pages with tons of supporting documents, submitted through sponsored projects, multiple reviewers, scored or streamlined, managed budgets, etc.  Simultaneous to all of this, my advisor had me doing all kinds of experiments and writing sections of grants he submitted.  We had good and bad success, but when I left the lab he had more money than he knew what to do with (4 NIH grants, 2 NSF, 3 private sources): polar opposite of how it was when I joined the lab (1 expiring NSF grant).  I learned early on not to take comments personally, and how to hob-nob with those that score the grants, and how to modify grants to get the funding you want.  Writing the grants was actually fun, too, because it forced us to organize thoughts on experiment and direction.  It's a skill that I was pissed about picking up at first, but I'm glad I learned it.  Especially since I USE IT NOW (GASP!).  I still have to get money, I just have a different target audience.  As you move up in industry, the blinders are pulled away and even I, an engineering scientist, have to focus on getting money to do my work.  Again, the key difference is I would rather write about my passions, not 'random' industrial work.  I actually had fun working on my Research Statement for my faculty apps.  And that was very similar to a grant, with aims, experiments, and outcomes.
4. How much importance do you place on publications?
   A ton.  I published into the double digits as a first author in grad school.  I have thrice that in first-author abstracts for conferences.  Publications define the furthest extent of the cumulative amount of human knowledge (see http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/), and this is where one should go if they want to see ground-breaking science.  My current products go into publication (with me as a 2nd-8th author) in the form of a physician publishing their success with the products.  When I do any science or R&D, we keep it on the DL so another company can't scoop us and make their shareholders rich instead of ours'.  I'm far more proud of my publications than patents (8 patents issued, 4 in review).  The application and translational research is something I'll miss, however, my proposed research has a strong translational focus, and I'm only applying to schools with a great relationship with start-ups and the medical school.  There's room for publication and profit. And I want to find it. Although it's a little more difficult when most of your work is device, rather than core-science, focused. 
5. Do you enjoy teaching and interacting with students?
   This is one of the things I miss the most.  Some student suck, but the amount of joy I would get from watching a student mature into a semi-competant researcher, or understand a concept they previously didn't, far outweighs all the other students that suck. My industrial mentor tells me that being around younger, vibrant people all the time, keeps you young, but I think it also keeps you smarter since you have to keep reiterating the topics.

Regarding free time: this is part of what turned me off of academia originally, the other parts were grants and pubs, but I've come to not mind these...although I experienced these in a different type of role.  My advisor would tell me that he works 80 hours, but whenever he wants.  This includes service, teaching, and research.  A co-advisor said he works 50 hours a week, and a prof at a separate university said he puts in 20-80 depending on what's going on.  What every single one of them said was, "to be given the ability to teach and do your own research, the service is a small sacrifice."  They all said it was worth the crap.  The latter professor has a very similar background (and personality) to me.  He worked for two years at a separate division of my company before turning to academia, and he said, "if you're a workaholic in academia, you're probably going to be one in industry, and vice versa".  If you love your work it doesn't seem like work, and then you find ways to fit in your time off.  My advisor took about 6 weeks of vacation, and regularly skipped out to spend time with family.  Currently, I put in between 30-80 hours a week depending on what's happening.  And then I have to travel once a month all over the world.  My boss consistently works 60-80 hours/week, and his boss puts in 80-100 not including travel.

All of this depends on how you are as a person, how fast you work, what type of position you're in, how your boss is, and the growth of your company, or how many grants or pubs you need.  I find the average is that industry people have more free time that the average academic.  But the academics seem to have more job satisfaction on average.  It's an interesting phenomenon.  I have a spouse and dog, and there are no plans to start a family.  And since I only sleep 4-6 hours a night, I have plenty of free time, as I did in grad school.  Most companies encourage the work-life balance, but I know plenty of people that don't take advantage.

Regarding stress, my friends in academia say that the first 5 years in academia are unbelievably more stressful that the first 5 in industry, but they tell me there's a switch after tenure.  But each person will be different.  I don't usually get stressed from anything.  My spouse says I'm a robot. During my qualifying exams my committee said I seemed too relaxed, and they would try to make me stress. They didn't. 

One final point is about money.  Professor salaries are mostly public, so you can look those up on your own. My industry offers ranged from $130k to $190k.  My current salary is more than that, but I'm beginning to hit the ceiling for science/engineering pay grades, and I'm not about to move into strict-managerial role.  The benefits are crazy good.  I'm still surprised about the benefits, discounts, and bonuses (from $10k-$40k), but working on problems that I am passionate about is very important, and academic salaries are still good.  

I think from my answers and the questions and interviews with people I know in academics, I'm currently better suited for academia, but each person is different, and I won't know until I try! If only future Phindustry could tell me if I'm doing the correct thing.