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 )
I'm not afraid of working in industry, I just don't want to. Why shouldn't something you do for 40 hours a week not be considered what you're doing with your life? I have a strong inkling that many of the people I've called my supervisors over the years have considered it a (very significant) perk that they get paid to do what they love most, and the pay isn't like what doctors and engineers get anyway - nobody goes into the lab for the money. Microbiologists come to mind. I was at Woods Hole in the summer of 2012. My roommate got on my nerves sometimes when she got up in the middle of the night and left the room, and when I finally asked her what was going on, she said she had to incubate bacteria. Microbiologists work the weirdest hours but I don't think they would have stayed in this subfield if they didn't positively love working with the little buggers. Paying the bills is obviously a necessary part of life, but I'd rather that be a side effect of my job rather than the purpose. Screw a job, I've got a vocation and a calling. Which happens to pay the bills.
I think when it's a viable option, go for it. My frustration is mostly directed at my roommate, who just got her Master's in Communications, has the aforementioned 200k of student loan debt, and is determined to go on to get her doctorate in Communications despite the fact that she was turned down from every one of the 10 grad schools to which she applied (an astronomical number and cost when you consider application & transcript fees). She now plans to take a year off, teach or something - probably making about $20k for that year if she does teach because she will be an adjunct - retake her GREs (more $$), and reapply to schools (even more $$) that will not fully fund her schooling (more and more and more $$$$$$) and then after that she is determined she will get a full-time, tenure track job in Communications when every article out there that you read about academia warns would-be professors that calling the tenure-track job market "slim" is being kind. The most memorable article I read on the subject crunched the numbers and concluded it was more likely for a kid to become an MBA star than a tenured professor. And she's trying to do it all...in the Communications field, which strikes me as a field that probably has extremely low demand for professors. I have a friend who's getting a doctorate in some kind of biology at Harvard. I don't know that much about biology, he worked on this in undergrad, maybe you would find it interesting. I know he's got publications out there but I can't find any; I don't have access to the big publication databases any more, not here. Idea of this is that STEM fields seem to have actual options that pay actual money post-grad degrees. He can keep on doing his research. There's interest in it. He's discovering new things...that maybe companies will turn around and incorporate into the industry at some point. If you don't have to work in the industry and can do something you love, by all means go for it. But I see a lot of people like my roommate who fight the industry while going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to pursue a dream that is not going to reap the paybacks she will need. It's frustrating because I feel like they rebel against the industry without having any real reason besides "it's not what I love." YOu can't pay student loans like hers based off of jobs that don't exist.
Dude, I think you should look into the NIH investigator pay scales. Tops out at about $181,000. You gotta pay your dues in biology, but you can make a lot of money in the lab. There aren't a lot of PI's out there who are starving, just the grad students and post-docs....and the pay isn't like what doctors and engineers get anyway - nobody goes into the lab for the money.
Oh, I know the NIH investigator pay scales are huge. It's really hard to get a lab there unless you're super-established, well-respected, and sort of a field household name. I hear some stuff through the grapevine from a relative who works on the 'other side' in extramural grants. It's also pretty hard to get a tenure-track job right now. My 2012 supervisor has been a postdoc for like seven years.
It takes some real major justification and long-time work to justify that huge of a salary in your grant package. Here's a table of average salaries by field and rank. The average for a full professor in biomedical sciences - FULL - is about half that. Also NIH's paylines are shit. There's a guy named Yuntao Wu - brilliant HIV investigator, mentioned in the textbook of the HIV class I took last summer - who is basically preparing to move to China because his money went down the crapper, last I heard. (He may have changed his plans. I don't know. He's still in the United States.) Relative in NIH grants says that handwringing and complaining is de rigueur in Bethesda these days.