[biomcgary]

I've never worked in a large corporation, just academia and startups. The nature of exploitation in academia is reasonably well known and you pretty get much what you expect if you go in with eyes open (although there is variation depending on your academic advisor). I transitioned from academia to a startup that was far more exploitive than anything I experienced previously, but the exposure it gave led to another startup that has been the exact opposite (generous compensation and equity, great colleagues, etc).

In each case (various academic labs and the two startups), my loyalty was to the biological problem we were trying to solve rather than to the institution. I selected advisors and startup based on the problem that we were trying to solve (e.g. improving drug development and human health). As long as I thought the institution was making progress, I was willing to overlook a lot. I suspect that the video game industry and a few others might (space!) have a lot of people with a similar view of loyalty (and levels of tolerated exploitation).