Differencea in working at academia and corporate technical jobs

Question

What are some differences in working at corporate technical jobs and academia (in pursuit of pure research on field X)? I am working in tech company and I'm slowly getting fed up with deadline pressure, bureaucracy and BS politics. Do they also exist in academia?

Answer 1

Yes, all of those exist in academia as well, but for tenured professors, at least, they are probably much less than in many industrial positions.

One of the advantages in academia (most fields) is that you can set your own research agenda and, for the most part, your own working schedule, so long as you are effective and productive.

But most academic positions require some meetings for important (and not-so-important) decisions. Your teaching schedule may not be under your control (or much, at least). Office hours might be mandated. These may limit your freedom to schedule somewhat, but usually much less than in the industrial field. At one point (pre COVID) I could fulfill all my obligations with two or maybe three days physically present on campus.

Industrial research, these days, is mostly product oriented, rather than pure, idea driven, research. It wasn't always so and there are some exceptions, but that is the trend. The implication is that in industry you probably have a boss who pushes you in ways that are valuable to the company, but maybe of little interest to you, personally.

For example, Dilbert resonates much more forcefully in industry than in academia. But you can find jerks everywhere, and some of them are your superiors. I had to deal with quite a lot of that early in my academic career. And I also met many very decent people in industrial settings, though the product pressure was always there.

I was always amazed in my own long career, that people actually paid me to think the thoughts I wanted to be thinking on my own.