Good to know what you want.
And these are not intended to dissuade, but just for a reality check.
I've worked in several STEM-related industries as well as in academic settings.
There are dangerous doofuses in both.
There are really cool people in both.
You can sometimes get to do really cool stuff in industry that you couldn't at all do in academia.
You can sometimes be cut off, usually by the profit line, in industrial settings, which happens less often in academia.
The biggest discontinuity is the need to please shareholders, which translates to everyone being ready to move on every couple of years because some shareholder's group keeps pushing for some increased profit margin on their shares and the only way to do that is to do lay-offs.
I'm in an area where layoffs are so common that there's an understood protocol for recognizing when they're likely to happen, planning how to get through them (never keep more than two boxes worth of personal stuff on your desk at any time), and methods of optimizing your contacts at that job (collect contact information in advance) and ways of planning ahead for when you're all at some place across town with everyone in different reportage structures (a bench rat can be reporting to someone at one place and be their supervisor at the next).
Doesn't always happen, but it can.
And you should still do what you want to do, not saying you shouldn't, just know where the potholes are and don't get eaten by one.
M.
