[dcolkitt]

Of course a lot of abuse happens in private enterprise. But typically, senior management is much much more proactive about it than department chairs and provosts. There's very few Fortune 500 companies where you could publicly get away with the kind of abuse that's just part and parcel of being a grad student or post doc at a major research university.

It might still happen either because it's well concealed. Or it might happen at smaller or poorly managed companies. But at the typical functional, large corporation, egregious abuse of your subordinates essentially guarantees that you'll be terminated if/when it's brought to senior management's attention.

Academia is different because tenured professors are given far more independence and autonomy. By contrast middle managers are tightly monitored and controlled by their own line managers. The typical large corporation strives very hard to promulgate a homogenous corporate culture across the org. Whereas academia as a system encourages professors to be fiercely independent maverick. That has both pros and cons, but one of the major cons is that it tolerates a lot more abuse and dysfunctional management towards the non-tenured subordinates.

[Beldin]

Your rosy picture of industry is surprising to me. It could be right, and the few takes I've heard (eg. recently, google's AI ethics mess) being only one side or exceptions that prove the rule.

But I have currently no reason to expect better from industry, and will want some proof before putting it on a pedestal.

[ErikVandeWater]

Abuse happens to people who don't have other options. If you abuse someone who has a white collar job, they generally leave quickly.

If you abuse a poor grad student who has to complete research to pay back his loans which cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, he will generally put up with it.