I can totally, completely relate. (throwaway here for obvious reasons)<p>I was a PhD student, then decided to join industry (software engineer). Most of the time I feel like this was a <i>huge</i> mistake. For people who are thoughtful, creative, like inventing things and thinking deeply... entry-level in industry <i>sucks</i>. 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 <i>think</i> and you have to just deal with it.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.