[gaius]

Academics consider anyone who has worked in industry “tainted”, such a person would never make it to tenure, even if they wanted to

Tenure is about the only carrot academia has to dangle

[DanielleMolloy]

I don't see that in computer science, or in my subarea of research. Major industry labs are highly respected contributors to science, and this has a long tradition with Xerox PARC and Bell labs, and now with Microsoft Research, Google Research and DeepMind (to name few among many).

[tnecniv]

That's not true. I knew a lot of professors at my undergrad, which is a well-known university, that worked in industrial research positions after their PhD before returning to academia.