Pros/cons in my experience:

Industry:

Pros:

- (much) better income

- assuming you choose the right place/domain, satisfaction you get by seeing you actually make something work and have a positive affect on the world

Cons:

- R&D departments are typically short on funding and their personnel is typically the first to be laid off in case company starts having a hard time (low cash inflow)

- can get routine and boring after a while. especially if you "get stuck" providing maintenance for a product that was developed by your team

- eventually you (sort of) have to specialize and get stuck in a specific filed / app domain

- it can be really hard to learn new things and gain new skills given you have to dedicate most of your time to your company

- product pressure: R&D teams are expected to work on tangible projects that will eventually (preferably very quickly) turn into profitable new products or features of existing products. when this does not happen things can get bumpy

- secret social hierarchies/rules and human nature: do NOT expect to be evaluated or valued by your education, experience, skills or even IQ. you will have to navigate around unwritten codes, undesignated leaders/managers and carve yourself a "place". being successful in industry depends on many factors most of which have zero positive correlation with your intelligence. some can have huge -negative- correlation, the stupider a person is, the more likely he is to succeed in industry. especially in management positions.

Academia:

Pros:

- once you get your tenure, unless you do something really really stupid, you are set for life.

- lower stress (generally speaking)

- if you can get to a point where you are seen a field guru, you can increase your income by sweet consulting deals (very easy money)

- you can always start up your company and do side deals

- flexible working hours and a very limited number of bosses that you have to report to (this can be a HUGE pro)

Cons:

- lower income, especially early in your career

- lots of teaching related chores, and the excruciating pain of teaching undergrads

- you have to get your tenure in a pre-defined time interval, can get really stressful

- finding juicy research topics that lead to multiple publications get be hard. even if you do find such a topic you will still need highly motivated AND capable MS/PhD students willing to work 10-12 hours/day for months, even years. if you can not get a tenure position in a well-known, high tier university finding such students can be very hard.

- RESEARCH FUNDING!!! - you will need to get your research group started with a couple of really good graduate students and grow from there. however, this means money. to get research funds you will have to write fund proposals to DARPA, NSF, etc. this is an art form (of balancing provable scientific facts with good old BS and putting it into fancy wording) by itself.

good luck either way...

Katikapalli Subramanyam Kalyan ,

I would say that Toygar Akgün 's answer is right on. Though I currently lead an R&D group and luckily for me, I get to choose the direction of R&D. This is the exception though. I have been interviewed for several similar positions in the past and I stayed away because expectations from those companies seemed to me not realistic. The expectations should be clear to you right on your first interview(there is usually more than one).

As for academia, the only thing that I would say different from Toygar is that it does not necessarily lead to lower stress environment. When you go to the interview ask about the culture.also, ask around folk that work there and even students.

Academic institutions that are research oriented are highly competitive and expect that you bring funding(also adds to the stress). Hybrid teaching/research can be tricky in landing the research position.

Regards

The main thrust in an industry job is working in a group and considering "customer as the king" whereas in academic job the main focus is in individual development activities and teaching / research publications. Also in an industry one tends to be always governed by the directives of the "boss", while in academics one tends to enjoy some amount of freedom in decision making.

Industry research is better as it gives you all the necessary information or data for the analysis of the problem. When you are the one looking for the data alone the research might not be conclusive.

Pro- industry oriented job makes researcher to proceed quickly in research than in academic settings.

Cons- there is less flexibility to the researcher in industry oriented job than in academic environment.

Want to +1 Arturo Geigel answer with another data point: I spent significant time in government and industry, now in academia as a Phd student.

The mix of research, grant and teaching loads experienced as early faculty, with minimal support, exceed a lot of lifts you are asked to do in industry. The intellectual work is about as hard but the auxiliary responsibilities in academia make for far more stress; consider, at the very least, you are paid 2-3x more in industry and do not have to handle grants, students and teaching.

After I have now read the above statements of the "pros and cons of choosing a research-oriented industry job over an academic job," I can now understand that a research-oriented industry job would be most attractive to a Ph.D.-level individual who wishes to focus on one area of concentration without becoming distracted by other assorted duties and responsibilities.

In marked contrast, an individual who decides to pursue the academic pathway to become a recipient of the terminal Ph.D. degree would perfect multi-tasking capabilities and learn to actually enjoy coordinating highly specialized research with the more socially oriented professional activities involved with teaching courses, advising students, attending and participating in faculty meetings, serving on regular and ad hoc committees with faculty colleagues and possibly also administrators and student representatives, reading research papers and serving on collaborative panels at conferences, while also publishing peer-reviewed articles in academic journals and consortium books, in order to build a reputation and participate as a local faculty member with sufficient expertise to attain national recognition, and ultimately, contribute to the world pool of knowledge in the field, thereby to achieve active participation and standing on an international scale.

As Artificial Intelligence and its related fields develop, there will be more opportunities both in industrial sectors, public and private, as well as in the academic world, public and private. Already, there is considerable interaction between industry and academia.

A supplementary question might be: If an individual feels equally drawn to industry and academia, and decides to acquire experience in both, is there a rationale in deciding which to pursue first? At some point, would age become a factor--would it be more difficult to changeover from industry to academia in mid career, or vice versa? Are other 'combination' career plans feasible, e.g., work in industry and teach an evening course or a summer seminar; or, on the other hand, pursue an advanced degree fulltime and get a part-time job in industry during the holidays or in the summertime.

Those who are from Btech Mtech PhD,I suggest them to prefer Academic.

Reason Rapid growth in their career.

Those who are from Msc mtech PhD. I suggest them to go to abroad for teaching or industry job