The biggest difference that I see for academia and industry is the structured projects present within industry and the unstructured projects you can choose within academia. Within industry for the most part the projects you are assigned are limited in scope to the business needs of the company. If the company is not headed in a direction of a passion project you have then there will be no funding for that project. While on the other hand for academia you can apply for grants and funding to fund specific projects and have more flexibility to incorporate topics of interest into your portfolio. This key difference in lifestyle is all dependent on the individual and how they like to function. Some prefer academia because of the freedom to choose their projects, which has some limits but is not as limited as industry. While others choose the more structured projects in industry and are more comfortable tackling problems in a larger functional group setting.