Not sure I count as mid career yet(graduated 2018, starting PhD 2022) but I can certainly echo the sentiment. I work in life sciences academia and if it were no

Not sure I count as mid career yet(graduated 2018, starting PhD 2022) but I can certainly echo the sentiment. I work in life sciences academia and if it were not for me leaving for school I 100% would be swapping to industry. I’m even quitting a bit earlier than anticipated because I’m fed up. I’ve been getting a lot more recruitment outreach this spring, some good some bad. The biggest thing is that they’re offering sometimes up to 2x my salary. My institution already compensates much higher than most schools (I make 70k, most research techs make like 30k-40k) so this was quite striking. Also hours are better, etc. A better barometer perhaps would be the postdocs I know, the majority of which are not bothering to pursue academia. Only 2 that I’m aware of landed tenure track faculty jobs. I personally have no plans to stay in academia unless I somehow land a tenure track faculty position at a R1 university which might as well be like winning the lottery. I’ll stick to industry or leverage my training to go into patent law/science policy/biotech investing.