Most of the differences you describe I experienced as well, except that holidays could be planned at a much shorter notice at our company, even though workdays were considerably longer (10 hours).
I also had to argue for, and then introduce, automated testing, and some other good practices that I'd expected to be industry standard (was nevertheless nice there was room for this, and it was appreciated in the end...).
After a while, though, I missed the research, the self-development, the thinking about broader problems, and also, even though the team was great; the social side of things (especially as the hours left me exhausted in the evenings and even into the weekend). I guess I'm someone who is happiest and most creative when working 8 hours or so, and not tired. I also missed my friends in Europe, and the life-style there (walkable cities, no abject poverty, etc).
As for working on important problems, yes I loved what the product tried to accomplish, and our company mission, but 80-90% of most peoples time was spent on bug-fixing, repaying/circumventing technical debt, and at best relatively minor features that most users probably would/should never notice. So on balance spending 10-20% of ones time on a new real-world problem, versus, say 70-100% on a theoretical one, might still end up in favor of the latter as for making a difference...
Everybody should make their own decision on grad-school vs industry, but trying both is definitely a good idea.
I took a similar route– quit my PhD program to join a startup at which I had interned the summer prior– and slowly find myself missing many aspects of grad school.
Will probably end back there at some point– if only there was a magical place with the best parts of grad school and the best parts of the startup world...
At the time, I was super stressed. I was working three days a week to pay for grad school and having to work pretty much every single day with barely any money to live on was hell. Start-up life, for me, was almost like a holiday. I was working regular hours, and although there were times where I was working hard and long hours it felt structured.
That being said, I absolutely loved grad school. The idea of it is what made me do it. My bachelors in CS left me wanting to know more, so a step-up was required.
I let my university know that I was struggling to make ends meet and that I would be leaving as I couldn't afford the next term. The university where I got my bachelors was as tight with money as possible, so I expected nothing, but they refunded EVERYTHING and wished me luck. I effectively got almost three months of education for free.
For that reason, I will return to grad school, and I will definitely continue it at the same university. Sadly, the price of a Masters degree in the UK has almost tripled, so it won't be any time soon. It if goes down to around £5k I'll definitely do it again.
Maybe you should consider pursuing fellowships or work at companies that would pay for you to get a higher degree and also provide a reasonable living stipend. Seems to me like someone with the drive you have, clearly hoping to pursue it but financially unable to, is the perfect candidate for one of those positions.
> The main issue was that I never crisply understood all the use-cases and requirements for the systems I was building. I felt weird making assertions about how people wanted to use something, when I had never operated or used it in the real world!
I think that if you're interested in building systems that actually get to be used <in the real world>, the industry is a better place. Personally, I enjoy doing a PhD because I have fewer restrictions which allows me to focus on the things I really find interesting. For example, I don't have to worry too much about making software user-friendly since it will only be used by myself or a handful of people, I don't have to handle tricky corner cases unless I'm actually hitting them on my data, etc.
You also get to work on problems that will only become relevant in the future, e.g. people who have been doing research relevant to many-core systems for quite some time.
The CSGSA also hosts an undergraduate "research mixer" which is a chill way of speed dating a bunch of projects.
I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choose to go back to my home country (not much of compsci products, but very good e-commerce and banking); so my expertise should be of value even in a consumer-of-technology (not producer) economy.
If anybody has ideas about how to pick an area for research, I'd love to hear.
The one with lots of publications in big-deal journals may or may not be running a sweatshop. And they may or may not be doing actually interesting science, because that game requires so much attention to fashion, fundability and grinding out large quantities of papers (contrary to common belief, prestigious journals do not mean journals publishing the highest quality papers).
But if you want to learn that particular trade then find the advisor best at it to study under.
Pragmatic advice. The problem you solve doesn't have to be paradigm-shifting or world-changing, just a bit above what humanity already knows [1].
w.r.t your question; pick an advisor you know you can work with for $x years first. Read papers before you pick your topic and keep looking for "holes" - these are where you can make your little dent.
[1] : http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
If you don't really know, maybe you shouldn't do it, or at least stop after your masters. PhD is not something you do some work to get, its rather something that comes along with the work you do.
If you've gotten an undergraduate and master's degree in computer science, you should already have a pretty good feel for the different areas. Choose the one you really want to immerse yourself in for reasons of pure interest, and pursue that one. Once you have the PhD, you can go on and do whatever you want afterwards. You don't have to stay in the same subarea as your thesis; lots of professors (my advisor included) have changed areas based on the times.
