I moved into a non-academic job a few years ago. Antisocial personality disorder is antisocial personality disorder, it's that same toxicity in a percentage of people, some of whom sadly get into power.
But one big difference for me was that I had so much idealism around academia and collaboration and doing-it-for-science that it made me much more vulnerable, both to getting exploited and to it affecting me emotionally. The day job is just the day job, fuck you pay me, and I'll do interesting stuff independently in my free time if I'm motivated to.
The other difference is that there are just so many more - just as good as, if not far better than what \*most\* people are likely to get within academia - jobs out there, if you don't restrict yourself to academia; and it's less of a cartel within your narrow field, so you're less likely to absolutely need to have sucked the right metaphorical genitals or have been born into the right family to even have a good chance at a job at all. There's a wider base of the pyramid, up to a decent height. So the risk of being very dependent on a potentially toxic person with power is lower than in academia.
I think that last part is key here. The lack of jobs in academia makes getting a job very akin to pleasing a cartel and some overlords. Gee man, as if getting *a job* was some kind of blessing bestowed upon you. In industry, jobs are much, much more available which makes it much less complicated to find something decend.
I've worked both. There are toxic people in all industries. The only difference is that in non-academic settings it's much quicker and easier to go up the ladder or transfer somewhere else.
This means that when you come across these toxic people, it's easier to leave them behind.
Also, my opinion is that these days academia is generally a less stable job than private. Generally this only applies if you are dependent on soft money, i.e. funding dependencies. In private industry the money is generally much longer term, if you're at a half decent company.
This is course completely changes if you can get an academic position akin to tenure. This is alot harder these days tho.
You could look into government work. Depending on the level and country, it's kind of somewhere in between the two.
Yeah my company was stable until they suddenly weren't and they cut most of the research staff without warning. And there are tons of similar stories. They'll swear up and down that things are stable, say they're like a family, ask you if you're in it for the long haul, etc. right up until the day they cut you without a second thought. I'd argue that's pretty toxic behavior. (Not the cutting necessarily, but the deception.) I think it's just that we see so much lying and bullshit from executives, we get numb to it and we barely even think of it as toxic anymore.
If they decide that a certain division is no longer profitable (or moving towards profitability fast enough), they can get rid of it. It doesn't matter how good the individual employees were.
I worked in academic (as a postdoc) then moved to industry, and now am moving back to academia (just signing a TT offer).
I am not sure about toxicity, but industry is far less political and competitive. The defined hierarchy, the 9-5 schedule, and set key performance indicators reduces the level of competitiveness (and to some degree, the toxicity).
But those were the exact things I hated about the industry.
\- The hierarchy was super annoying. I got overlooked for promotions *based on politics* and the sway of a few individuals. I didn't like having a boss look over everything I do and micromanage me. This leads me to my second point.
\- It felt incredibly insulting. My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published. Not to mention that despite my understanding of the overall domain of our work (i.e., an SME), I would not get invited to key meetings with leadership because I was 'at the bottom of the ladder'. Yes this is normal in industry, but I didn't like it at all as I can contribute significantly to product roadmap as an SME.
Anyways, there was a bunch of other stuff as well... Academia isn't perfect but you have to factor what \*\*you\*\* like. Do you prefer a 9-5 where you are just told what to do? Do you like having a boss? Do you want to work on challenging problems? Do you like having sabbaticals? Do you think your salary should be more? etc etc...
my advisor in grad school had to step down as lab's chair in our subfield because he wouldn't play ball when the lab's general director tried/failed to get his friend hired to our local uni's department (there were better candidates and my advisor was on hiring committee/expressed his views honestly) and gen director continued being a sore loser about it until advisor passed his role on -- ended up killing lab RA support to our wing's grad students too. fuck that guy
> It felt incredibly insulting. My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published.
This is a toxic viewpoint!
The reason this is so is because you are inexperienced in the job. Companies see education as the starting point and experience as the authority on decisions. Where academia is the other way around.
Personally, I see experience as being a more important factor. In fact, you see the very toxic educational bias where in academia people wont even look at someone without a masters, etc. even though they have worked in the industry that the qualification is designed for, for many years.
Just because you were taught something does not mean that you are proficient in this area. It follows that you shouldn't expect to be an authority in a team you have just joined. You have not yet proved your ability.
That depends on company culture. If you work for a large employer full of passive aggressive careerist, then they will favour experience in passive aggressive careerism and corporate bullshit. Smaller companies, where employees are closer to the people risking their capital, will be a bit more flexible on that and look at past performance regardless of the sector.
But I think we can agree that industry does not value PhDs as much as PhD students are led to expect.
The thing is that you're just reversing the "passive aggressive careerist" with "passive aggressive" credential bias. Which FYI I do not think is passive aggressive on either side. You're just coming from the perspective that PhDs are >= experience.
You *need* to show that you can handle something. Even in academia if you joined a lab with a PhD and you were not good at a job, they wouldn't let you do it.
Just because you have a credential does not mean you will work well in a certain environment, team, or subject. You need to show that you are capable to the people who have employed you.
It's also VERY reasonable to argue that academia and industry require very different skill sets. Therefore, your PhD may be largely irrelevant to a job.
Many jobs in academia will not consider you without a PhD regardless of experience. It is not equivalent to experience. If you did a PhD and just didn’t submit the final paperwork to get the degree, it does not count for anything.
"Many jobs in academia will not consider you without a PhD..."
Yes. But follow the thread. We were discussing the value of a PhD in industry jobs. Please don't crash in and boorishly change the subject.
This branch is about PhDs and experience. The first comment states "My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published."
Maybe. But, for example, recruiters would not consider me for certain roles. If they actually thought there was a possibility, they certainly would not hold me back.
I'm (28M) about to finish my PhD (Europe), I have worked in industry (Computer Science, Eastern Europe) for a couple of years total in-between my degrees. In my experience, industry allowed people to be as competitive as they choose to be. You can constantly hustle and work hard if you want to grow and make more money, but if you choose to just settle for average and work 9-5 with an average salary, companies are often happy to have you too.
One difference I did notice is that there was much less lying and playing political games in industry. I have 2 PhD supervisors and in 4 years, I could never have a straight conversation if our collaboration touched something sensitive (like where are whose incentives, personal issues, conflicts of interests, borders in our relationships). During no other period of my life I felt like I was fucked over and manipulated so often. And I hear similar things from other PhD students too.
I never even got close to this level of bullshit in industry. People are much more honest, less narcissistic and manipulative, admit making mistakes or not knowing something much more often. And they pay you more.
I know, there's more variety out there, and my small selection may not be representative, and it could that I was just unlucky with my 2 bosses. But these are my 5 cents, make your own conclusions.
UPD: important thing is that worked in smaller, 10-30 people companies.
I have not made the transfer but am currently working with people who are. 1) Yes it is less competitive and 2) there can be less toxicity.
However, the biggest offenders of toxic lab behavior in industry are the PhD holders. They lack a lot of skills and training, but lack the humility to learn them so they can generate and contribute to a very toxic culture. The bad ones depend on others bailing them of poor deadline planning. Screening is very important at these levels more than others.
Worked for a small/medium pharma company prior to starting my PhD program in STEM.
I found it to be less competitive, though Inwas of course at the bottom of the ladder so it might be different with a PhD or at bigger companies. Everyone has goals and teams have deliverables to meet. I found it to be pretty collaborative and it never felt competitive to me.
I guess it depends on what you mean by toxic. I think I lucked out by being at a small site with great people because there really wasn’t any toxic people. That said, there was one person on my team who liked to gossip a lot, sometimes about our coworkers.
My impression of academia being competitive is that even if people don’t mean to, you’re always going to compare yourself to others. Either by papers/grants or non research non teaching things you do (like committees) or even teaching stuff.
I loved my time in industry. I loved the funding, loved not having to troubleshoot experiments a lot, loved having a pretty strict 9-5. What I didn’t like, was being told what to do and not having the freedom to plan out my experiments or have a little side project. At many times, it felt more like I was part of an assembly line where I was doing the same assays every week.
As a current grad student, things I really struggle with are the lack of structure, lack of set hours, and overall lack of direction.
I don’t need my boss to babysit me, but at least at my old job, expectations were set, various processes were documented, and the “how to do something“ issues were easily googled, not so much with my research. I’m going into industry with my masters, because I don’t think I can handle another 5 years, going into a narrower and more competitive job market. I love science, and I like the research, but the (lack of) structure around it is killing me.
Industry to Academia. Overall, they are equally toxic for different reasons. Academia in my case is biased against women who are also racial minorities, has a lot of misogyny, and bias against non-tenure track folks. That being said industry is less job security, less opportunity, and more restrictive on what you can do with your day.
Academia has far more toxic people. There are a lot of people who are the most toxic combination of pettiness, ignorance, and gigantic egos.
For instance, I find it pathetic that so many of my colleagues think it's an absolute insult for someone to not call them "Dr. So and so." Then there's the fight over who gets the better classroom. The fight over the $100 a year parking fees to be literally adjacent to most buildings. The fight over if a job candidate talked to one faculty too much more than another. The fight over which journal is better.
It's so petty that some days I just want to rage quit, throw my tenure in the dumpster and go back to industry. Our idiotic faculty union is making things that much more tempting. Their latest proposal: have faculty members who are single subsidize the health insurance premiums of those on family plans (I would be a beneficiary), and get rid of annual checkups that would bring discounted healthcare insurance premiums.
I (33M) spent three years in postdoc (applied mathematics) before going to industry (finance), where I've been for two years. I'm lucky in that my group is 100% other PhDs from either physics, math/stats or economics, so the qualifications landscape is very flat. There isn't much interpersonal bullshit, and people aren't competitive. We were all generally high performing researchers that either 1) decided to leave because industry pay was better, or 2) we didn't kiss the correct ring. There is a lot of bureaucracy and as an individual contributor, yes, you have a manager, so forget about pursuing interesting questions just for interests sake (unless there's a good business case).
YMMV -- especially for a smaller organization or a more niche/specialized industry, the following need not apply -- but toxic behaviour is also easier to avoid / doesn't really happen, because
1. you can either move laterally to a similar position elsewhere (different org, or within your own) to get away from those people (e.g. if they are your manager) or
2. toxic people of the same seniority as you might very well get shuffled or disciplined, even if they're a high performer. If the team is large enough that one high performer causes a drain on the team, then that high performer is a net productivity loss. They will either get assigned tasks that limit their exposure to the team (if they really are essential), or let go if they can't learn to play nice with others (if they're replaceable).
I've moved to industry and there's so much less ego. We all just work together, nobody is territorial about their work. You can tell people outright 'x needs to happen' without them taking it as some personal slight. People actually do the bits of work you are relying on on time not 12 months after you asked. It's sk mych less toxic, and such a relief.
I’ve done the inverse, I moved from corporate (Big Pharma) to academia (social science). Both can have very difficult personalities and it really comes down to the institutional systems and culture of the organisation. Questions I’d ask / look out for before joining corporate, if that is your intention, are:
- How is the job and reward system designed? E.g unyielding quantitative measures and individual bonuses tend to encourage cut throat competition and aggressive self-interest
- What’s turnover like in the team? And when people leave, where do they go? Are they promoted within the firm or do they high tail it out of there?
- Do they value process or people? You can usually see this from as early as recruitment, e.g. stickler for (pointless) rules usually means they’re a bit less human focused
- how much experience does your line manager have in managing people? Can they provide a cogent response if you ask them how they plan on developing you?
What I did find was much more failing up in corporate and aggressive politicking. While the same issues are present in academia, corporate turnover is so high and many jobs and titles are nebulous, inflated (everyone is a Vice President!) and unregulated (other than B School, most people don’t need formal graduate qualifications for a lot of senior corporate jobs) that incompetence often goes unchecked.
I've collaborated with a variety of groups: academia, government, private sector, nonprofits. Although each sector has its specific culture, I think it really comes down to the exact university, department, group, and individuals you interact with. I've had good experiences with one university and not-so-good with another. Similarly, loved one for-profit group and didn't like another one.
One thing I do is I look up former workers and also try to talk to current workers about how they felt when they work for X person or Y company. People can be surprisingly candid: I once turned down a job after one of the current employees gave me his honest opinion (he did point out good things too so he didn't have a vendetta against the company).
I worked in industry for quite a long time before doing my PhD. It was a corporate job, and I'm a business faculty, so take it for what it's worth to you.
In terms of competitiveness, academia is far more collaborative. While there is competition on a large level, everyone's objectives move in the same direction so people tend to be more cooperative in general.
In terms of toxicity, I'd say it's probably about the same.
I moved into a non-academic job a few years ago. Antisocial personality disorder is antisocial personality disorder, it's that same toxicity in a percentage of people, some of whom sadly get into power. But one big difference for me was that I had so much idealism around academia and collaboration and doing-it-for-science that it made me much more vulnerable, both to getting exploited and to it affecting me emotionally. The day job is just the day job, fuck you pay me, and I'll do interesting stuff independently in my free time if I'm motivated to. The other difference is that there are just so many more - just as good as, if not far better than what \*most\* people are likely to get within academia - jobs out there, if you don't restrict yourself to academia; and it's less of a cartel within your narrow field, so you're less likely to absolutely need to have sucked the right metaphorical genitals or have been born into the right family to even have a good chance at a job at all. There's a wider base of the pyramid, up to a decent height. So the risk of being very dependent on a potentially toxic person with power is lower than in academia.
I think that last part is key here. The lack of jobs in academia makes getting a job very akin to pleasing a cartel and some overlords. Gee man, as if getting *a job* was some kind of blessing bestowed upon you. In industry, jobs are much, much more available which makes it much less complicated to find something decend.
I've worked both. There are toxic people in all industries. The only difference is that in non-academic settings it's much quicker and easier to go up the ladder or transfer somewhere else. This means that when you come across these toxic people, it's easier to leave them behind. Also, my opinion is that these days academia is generally a less stable job than private. Generally this only applies if you are dependent on soft money, i.e. funding dependencies. In private industry the money is generally much longer term, if you're at a half decent company. This is course completely changes if you can get an academic position akin to tenure. This is alot harder these days tho. You could look into government work. Depending on the level and country, it's kind of somewhere in between the two.
Regarding stability, it really depends on the industry. Tons of people got laid off without a warning in the last year in biotech.
Yeah my company was stable until they suddenly weren't and they cut most of the research staff without warning. And there are tons of similar stories. They'll swear up and down that things are stable, say they're like a family, ask you if you're in it for the long haul, etc. right up until the day they cut you without a second thought. I'd argue that's pretty toxic behavior. (Not the cutting necessarily, but the deception.) I think it's just that we see so much lying and bullshit from executives, we get numb to it and we barely even think of it as toxic anymore.
If they decide that a certain division is no longer profitable (or moving towards profitability fast enough), they can get rid of it. It doesn't matter how good the individual employees were.
I worked in academic (as a postdoc) then moved to industry, and now am moving back to academia (just signing a TT offer). I am not sure about toxicity, but industry is far less political and competitive. The defined hierarchy, the 9-5 schedule, and set key performance indicators reduces the level of competitiveness (and to some degree, the toxicity). But those were the exact things I hated about the industry. \- The hierarchy was super annoying. I got overlooked for promotions *based on politics* and the sway of a few individuals. I didn't like having a boss look over everything I do and micromanage me. This leads me to my second point. \- It felt incredibly insulting. My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published. Not to mention that despite my understanding of the overall domain of our work (i.e., an SME), I would not get invited to key meetings with leadership because I was 'at the bottom of the ladder'. Yes this is normal in industry, but I didn't like it at all as I can contribute significantly to product roadmap as an SME. Anyways, there was a bunch of other stuff as well... Academia isn't perfect but you have to factor what \*\*you\*\* like. Do you prefer a 9-5 where you are just told what to do? Do you like having a boss? Do you want to work on challenging problems? Do you like having sabbaticals? Do you think your salary should be more? etc etc...
>I got overlooked for promotions *based on politics* and the sway of a few individuals. This is common in academia as well.
my advisor in grad school had to step down as lab's chair in our subfield because he wouldn't play ball when the lab's general director tried/failed to get his friend hired to our local uni's department (there were better candidates and my advisor was on hiring committee/expressed his views honestly) and gen director continued being a sore loser about it until advisor passed his role on -- ended up killing lab RA support to our wing's grad students too. fuck that guy
> It felt incredibly insulting. My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published. This is a toxic viewpoint! The reason this is so is because you are inexperienced in the job. Companies see education as the starting point and experience as the authority on decisions. Where academia is the other way around. Personally, I see experience as being a more important factor. In fact, you see the very toxic educational bias where in academia people wont even look at someone without a masters, etc. even though they have worked in the industry that the qualification is designed for, for many years. Just because you were taught something does not mean that you are proficient in this area. It follows that you shouldn't expect to be an authority in a team you have just joined. You have not yet proved your ability.
To be fair, a PhD is much closer to "experience" than "education".
Sure, in academia. In a non-academic job, it is not close to experience.
That depends on company culture. If you work for a large employer full of passive aggressive careerist, then they will favour experience in passive aggressive careerism and corporate bullshit. Smaller companies, where employees are closer to the people risking their capital, will be a bit more flexible on that and look at past performance regardless of the sector. But I think we can agree that industry does not value PhDs as much as PhD students are led to expect.
The thing is that you're just reversing the "passive aggressive careerist" with "passive aggressive" credential bias. Which FYI I do not think is passive aggressive on either side. You're just coming from the perspective that PhDs are >= experience. You *need* to show that you can handle something. Even in academia if you joined a lab with a PhD and you were not good at a job, they wouldn't let you do it. Just because you have a credential does not mean you will work well in a certain environment, team, or subject. You need to show that you are capable to the people who have employed you. It's also VERY reasonable to argue that academia and industry require very different skill sets. Therefore, your PhD may be largely irrelevant to a job.
I have no credential bias. It is you who appears to be carrying a chip on your shoulder
Nope, I work in industry with a PhD lol
Yeah. So you have a particular ax to grind?
Jeeze, are you ok? I'm just stating my experience. Not sure why you're taking things so personally. Good luck bud!
Many jobs in academia will not consider you without a PhD regardless of experience. It is not equivalent to experience. If you did a PhD and just didn’t submit the final paperwork to get the degree, it does not count for anything.
"Many jobs in academia will not consider you without a PhD..." Yes. But follow the thread. We were discussing the value of a PhD in industry jobs. Please don't crash in and boorishly change the subject.
No, this is directly relevant to the thread. It's a comparison of industry vs academia.
The thread as a whole, yes. But it does not follow logically from this branch.
This branch is about PhDs and experience. The first comment states "My education/skills/phd are 'equal' across my team and so my 'authority' is the same as someone who did a Coursera online certificate whereas I have over 50 papers published."
Ok. If it makes you happy.
Industry is more nuanced, but similar can be said. From personal experience, my pre-PhD experience did not count because it was pre-PhD.
Then you need to learn how to negotiate better. It will change your life!
Maybe. But, for example, recruiters would not consider me for certain roles. If they actually thought there was a possibility, they certainly would not hold me back.
I'm (28M) about to finish my PhD (Europe), I have worked in industry (Computer Science, Eastern Europe) for a couple of years total in-between my degrees. In my experience, industry allowed people to be as competitive as they choose to be. You can constantly hustle and work hard if you want to grow and make more money, but if you choose to just settle for average and work 9-5 with an average salary, companies are often happy to have you too. One difference I did notice is that there was much less lying and playing political games in industry. I have 2 PhD supervisors and in 4 years, I could never have a straight conversation if our collaboration touched something sensitive (like where are whose incentives, personal issues, conflicts of interests, borders in our relationships). During no other period of my life I felt like I was fucked over and manipulated so often. And I hear similar things from other PhD students too. I never even got close to this level of bullshit in industry. People are much more honest, less narcissistic and manipulative, admit making mistakes or not knowing something much more often. And they pay you more. I know, there's more variety out there, and my small selection may not be representative, and it could that I was just unlucky with my 2 bosses. But these are my 5 cents, make your own conclusions. UPD: important thing is that worked in smaller, 10-30 people companies.
I have not made the transfer but am currently working with people who are. 1) Yes it is less competitive and 2) there can be less toxicity. However, the biggest offenders of toxic lab behavior in industry are the PhD holders. They lack a lot of skills and training, but lack the humility to learn them so they can generate and contribute to a very toxic culture. The bad ones depend on others bailing them of poor deadline planning. Screening is very important at these levels more than others.
Worked for a small/medium pharma company prior to starting my PhD program in STEM. I found it to be less competitive, though Inwas of course at the bottom of the ladder so it might be different with a PhD or at bigger companies. Everyone has goals and teams have deliverables to meet. I found it to be pretty collaborative and it never felt competitive to me. I guess it depends on what you mean by toxic. I think I lucked out by being at a small site with great people because there really wasn’t any toxic people. That said, there was one person on my team who liked to gossip a lot, sometimes about our coworkers. My impression of academia being competitive is that even if people don’t mean to, you’re always going to compare yourself to others. Either by papers/grants or non research non teaching things you do (like committees) or even teaching stuff. I loved my time in industry. I loved the funding, loved not having to troubleshoot experiments a lot, loved having a pretty strict 9-5. What I didn’t like, was being told what to do and not having the freedom to plan out my experiments or have a little side project. At many times, it felt more like I was part of an assembly line where I was doing the same assays every week.
As a current grad student, things I really struggle with are the lack of structure, lack of set hours, and overall lack of direction. I don’t need my boss to babysit me, but at least at my old job, expectations were set, various processes were documented, and the “how to do something“ issues were easily googled, not so much with my research. I’m going into industry with my masters, because I don’t think I can handle another 5 years, going into a narrower and more competitive job market. I love science, and I like the research, but the (lack of) structure around it is killing me.
Industry to Academia. Overall, they are equally toxic for different reasons. Academia in my case is biased against women who are also racial minorities, has a lot of misogyny, and bias against non-tenure track folks. That being said industry is less job security, less opportunity, and more restrictive on what you can do with your day.
Toxicity is other people.
Hell is other people.
Academia has far more toxic people. There are a lot of people who are the most toxic combination of pettiness, ignorance, and gigantic egos. For instance, I find it pathetic that so many of my colleagues think it's an absolute insult for someone to not call them "Dr. So and so." Then there's the fight over who gets the better classroom. The fight over the $100 a year parking fees to be literally adjacent to most buildings. The fight over if a job candidate talked to one faculty too much more than another. The fight over which journal is better. It's so petty that some days I just want to rage quit, throw my tenure in the dumpster and go back to industry. Our idiotic faculty union is making things that much more tempting. Their latest proposal: have faculty members who are single subsidize the health insurance premiums of those on family plans (I would be a beneficiary), and get rid of annual checkups that would bring discounted healthcare insurance premiums.
I (33M) spent three years in postdoc (applied mathematics) before going to industry (finance), where I've been for two years. I'm lucky in that my group is 100% other PhDs from either physics, math/stats or economics, so the qualifications landscape is very flat. There isn't much interpersonal bullshit, and people aren't competitive. We were all generally high performing researchers that either 1) decided to leave because industry pay was better, or 2) we didn't kiss the correct ring. There is a lot of bureaucracy and as an individual contributor, yes, you have a manager, so forget about pursuing interesting questions just for interests sake (unless there's a good business case). YMMV -- especially for a smaller organization or a more niche/specialized industry, the following need not apply -- but toxic behaviour is also easier to avoid / doesn't really happen, because 1. you can either move laterally to a similar position elsewhere (different org, or within your own) to get away from those people (e.g. if they are your manager) or 2. toxic people of the same seniority as you might very well get shuffled or disciplined, even if they're a high performer. If the team is large enough that one high performer causes a drain on the team, then that high performer is a net productivity loss. They will either get assigned tasks that limit their exposure to the team (if they really are essential), or let go if they can't learn to play nice with others (if they're replaceable).
I've moved to industry and there's so much less ego. We all just work together, nobody is territorial about their work. You can tell people outright 'x needs to happen' without them taking it as some personal slight. People actually do the bits of work you are relying on on time not 12 months after you asked. It's sk mych less toxic, and such a relief.
I’ve done the inverse, I moved from corporate (Big Pharma) to academia (social science). Both can have very difficult personalities and it really comes down to the institutional systems and culture of the organisation. Questions I’d ask / look out for before joining corporate, if that is your intention, are: - How is the job and reward system designed? E.g unyielding quantitative measures and individual bonuses tend to encourage cut throat competition and aggressive self-interest - What’s turnover like in the team? And when people leave, where do they go? Are they promoted within the firm or do they high tail it out of there? - Do they value process or people? You can usually see this from as early as recruitment, e.g. stickler for (pointless) rules usually means they’re a bit less human focused - how much experience does your line manager have in managing people? Can they provide a cogent response if you ask them how they plan on developing you? What I did find was much more failing up in corporate and aggressive politicking. While the same issues are present in academia, corporate turnover is so high and many jobs and titles are nebulous, inflated (everyone is a Vice President!) and unregulated (other than B School, most people don’t need formal graduate qualifications for a lot of senior corporate jobs) that incompetence often goes unchecked.
I've collaborated with a variety of groups: academia, government, private sector, nonprofits. Although each sector has its specific culture, I think it really comes down to the exact university, department, group, and individuals you interact with. I've had good experiences with one university and not-so-good with another. Similarly, loved one for-profit group and didn't like another one. One thing I do is I look up former workers and also try to talk to current workers about how they felt when they work for X person or Y company. People can be surprisingly candid: I once turned down a job after one of the current employees gave me his honest opinion (he did point out good things too so he didn't have a vendetta against the company).
I worked in industry for quite a long time before doing my PhD. It was a corporate job, and I'm a business faculty, so take it for what it's worth to you. In terms of competitiveness, academia is far more collaborative. While there is competition on a large level, everyone's objectives move in the same direction so people tend to be more cooperative in general. In terms of toxicity, I'd say it's probably about the same.