I've moved from the private sector (consumer tech) to government research (contractor who works with many FFRDCs). The cultural shift is, frankly, seismic. Th

I've moved from the private sector (consumer tech) to government research (contractor who works with many FFRDCs). The cultural shift is, frankly, seismic. The problems are no less important or impactful, but the timescale we're working on is years or even decades, so much of the all-out, balls-to-the wall constant stress you find in the startup/scaleup/consumer tech sphere is not there. I still get to do impactful work, that I find more interesting at a consumer tech job. I took a ~10% pay cut (I'm not a SWE, so YMMV considerably on the size of pay cut you might take), but I'm super happy with the choice I made. There are tons of federal research labs and opportunities out there hurting for software talent if you enjoy the practice but not the culture of most consumer software shops.