[rapjr9]

I've worked in both industry and academia and both can have severe abuse problems. PhD students are used as free labor to advance a prof's reputation so the prof's have no incentive to let them graduate, especially if they prove capable. I've seen students blackmail professors to get the prof to let them graduate (i.e., "no more work on side projects unless I get a clear graduation date").

  In industry your boss has some incentive to keep you productive and happy, but co-employees can be incredibly mean as there is often competition among employees especially if times are tough.  Everyone wants to keep feeding their family and will tear you down in sneaky ways if it helps them.  There are a lot of ambitious people as well who will try to climb over you and undermine you and use you.  When you interview for a job, pay as much attention to the nature of who you'll be working with as to your potential boss's nature.  That can happen with grad students also, but given the specialization in PhD's it's rare that students are actually directly competing with each other, although in a sense you are competing with all grad students for research impact.