Throwaway account. Yes that is exactly what happened to me. Figured I'd do a PhD so took a research / part time teaching position after masters. Terrible money, demanding job, knee deep in politics. After about 12 months I said fuck it and went and got a job for 4x the money and a 35 hour week. No regrets.

How did you get that job? I've read similar stories a couple of times here on HN yet I'm struggling to do the same. My main road block: not really having acquired the right skill set for industry after having focused for year to fine-tune my CV for academic positions. This is now kind of biting me in my rear side: I cannot do the rat wheel of academia any more, am not exactly young any more either, am sort of highly skilled in CS academia but not really suitable for a lot of CS industry positions.