This article is interesting to me, but I have to take issue with the concept of "thriving" for a scientist. I assume the conditions for thriving will be differe

This article is interesting to me, but I have to take issue with the concept of "thriving" for a scientist. I assume the conditions for thriving will be different for different people, so what follows is my perspective only. Can a biotechnology startup really provide a better standard of living than academia? Almost certainly yes, from my experience; free lunch and swag are fun, and the pay is much better, but still far out of proportion to the effort put in, which is only slightly less than academia. Can a biotechnology startup really remove the fun and wonder from science? Definitely yes, especially when money questions are prioritized over science questions (always). Is it worth trading the abject discomfort of academia for the semi-comfort of industry and the fun of science for the humdrum of product pipelining? Only individuals can answer that question, and I have not yet answered this question for myself. It is true that industry feels like "selling out" and is seen as such by the academics, however this may be caused by sour grapes style reasoning when jealous. I hate to say this, but most of the industry people I know are far less intelligent and far less ambitious than the people I knew in academia. They're far less cut-throat, and have far better teamwork, too. The office politics are much friendlier, and non-science people aren't looked down upon in industry in the way they are in academia. More efficient and profitable to have the industry folks around, sure-- but not a single scientific idealist around, and certainly no veritable philosophers of science, meaning that experiments are at worst (either by ignorance or malice) exercises in manufacturing the desired results, just like in academia. At best, I'd say the quality of results are comparable between the two institutions. The emphasis in industry is on production of cash rather than knowledge, which seems fundamentally not science to me. So, what is a scientist to do? Hard to weigh in on either side with confidence. The trouble is that you can't simply leave academia to "try out" a startup for a while-- it's heresy, and will be punished by refusal of reentry. I guess this may be changing, but up to the present, that's how it's been for people. There is a flow of people to industry from academia, but not in the opposite direction. It's also no secret that industry can be the graveyard of highly intelligent people who were rising stars in academia before switching... sometimes they get lost in a dead-end department (recently, such as many promising folks at Novartis' siRNA team, before it was shut down and hit with layoffs) and other times they get stuck beneath an imperial-style boss-- a similar trap in academia.