I was in a Ph.D. program for 3 years and decided to leave early because I felt academia was not right for me.<p>My personal feelings about academia are only tangential to this thread, and far too verbose to describe here. But my general conclusion was that essentially no one should do post-docs. They are mostly only value-destructive, career-wise, and force you to delay even having proper health insurance for far too long in life. The Economist&#x27;s article &quot;The Disposable Academic&quot; is a reasonable summary approximation of what I learned about academia.<p>&gt; aside from aggressively networking with people who have the sort of job you want to have<p>In some sense, this is very difficult for me. I don&#x27;t care that much what the topical content of a job is -- I care much more about <i>the manner in which I work</i>.  I have many contacts who work professionally in data science, but I wouldn&#x27;t want their job. Most of them just seem to be naturally more capable of making compromises about noisy workspaces and projects that don&#x27;t use ML to help the business.<p>&gt; As for the things you value being impossible to find at modern tech jobs, if you are valuable enough, almost all organizations will do things like put up partitions for you, let you work flexible hours, and so forth.<p>My experience across 4 organizations is very different. Even when a manager would tell me I was an indispensable asset to the team and they were thrilled with my efforts, they would simultaneously tell me they could not make even the tiniest concession about physical workspaces or other arrangements. I&#x27;ve often found that if you do not negotiate these things heavily, up-front, and get them in writing, then it&#x27;s simply impossible to ever get them.