I can totally, completely relate. (throwaway here for obvious reasons) I was a PhD student, then decided to join industry (software engineer). Most of the time

I can totally, completely relate. (throwaway here for obvious reasons) I was a PhD student, then decided to join industry (software engineer). Most of the time I feel like this was a huge mistake. For people who are thoughtful, creative, like inventing things and thinking deeply... entry-level in industry sucks. You do what you're told. You're stuck with coworkers, managers, team leads who don't understand what you do or make shitty technical decisions or just don't think and you have to just deal with it. I think that there's good and there's bad in every company, and it's sort of self-reinforcing. People who just... don't "get it"?... see original thinkers as annoying or argumentative or unnecessarily non-compliant or just full of crazy (in a bad way) ideas. Just sit down, shut up, and write the damn code the way I told you. People who come from academia and study Haskell in their free time or whatever see bad teams and just run away. For someone stuck on such a team, though, life really sucks because you're supposed to use each experience as a "ladder" the next, going on recommendations of people who see you've done a good job. If you get caught somewhere where you just don't fit... well... recovering from that is tricky. If you can't already tell, I'm on such a team now, so I can totally relate. I'm thinking of just quitting and floating on savings for a while, maybe going back to academia, who knows. I'd like to believe that "don't give up" and "follow your ideas and passions" still apply.