Indeed. I'm an HCI researcher - I've been in academia, in startups, and now in R&D at a large successful company.
I'm much happier at the latter. None of the pressure to publish/write grant proposals all the time like in academia, and much more time to actually sit down and think thoroughly about problems than in startups.
There are of course downsides - you don't have much control over the product like you might have in a startup, and you can't pursue completely crazy blue sky stuff like you might be able to as a grad student; but it's worked out for me.
If anyone reading this is interested in HCI research and designing future hardware; if you're as comfortable programming as you are with a soldering iron as you are in Sketch as you are reading academic papers and reflecting deeply about the field; please send a resume/portfolio to the email in my bio.
I think that probably works well in larger enterprises that are intentionally separating their Research orgs from their Product orgs. So that the former isn't ultimately beholden to the same success criteria as the latter. Since the whole point of Research is that it informs future Product, not Product demanding Research.
Though I've noticed an unfortunate trend where large enterprises create a Research org that isn't any such thing and is instead just an incubator for the Product org. It seems to result in sadness for both sides.
I'm much happier at the latter. None of the pressure to publish/write grant proposals all the time like in academia, and much more time to actually sit down and think thoroughly about problems than in startups.
There are of course downsides - you don't have much control over the product like you might have in a startup, and you can't pursue completely crazy blue sky stuff like you might be able to as a grad student; but it's worked out for me.
If anyone reading this is interested in HCI research and designing future hardware; if you're as comfortable programming as you are with a soldering iron as you are in Sketch as you are reading academic papers and reflecting deeply about the field; please send a resume/portfolio to the email in my bio.