In my opinion and in part because I've had to deal with a perpetual grad student for my roommate this year, I feel that people are too afraid of working in the industry. They view it as "selling out." Why? What are you selling out? My roommate claims she "couldn't survive" if she got a corporate job. Well, with nearly 200k in student loan debt, she's not going to survive on an adjunct's salary, either.

You probably know more about corporate science culture than I do - it might vary from the general corporate culture that I do know. Maybe there isn't a lot of creative freedom to it, or maybe it's very very boring. Maybe your heart is set on research and you couldn't do that in a corporate environment. I'll tell ya what though, I find the corporate world almost completely painless, and being able to pay my bills will never be boring. It's not what I want to do with my life, but I fail to see why something I do for 40 hours a week should be considered what I'm actually doing with my life, either. What I'm doing with my life is what I achieve during the rest of the time. (And during my down time at work...whistles innocently )