As with any profession, you hear only from those with the absolute worst experiences who write on HN, Reddit, etc. (The students who are excelling are not writing rants on Reddit.) I've seen the full gamut of Ph.D.-level experiences, from the terrible to the amazing. I've also seen a large dynamic range of software engineering experiences at various companies, at both startups and large orgs. In the end, I don't have any definitive answers, but I wouldn't rule out academia if you can get yourself to be as well-positioned as possible. The same holds for industry. So yeah, I didn't add any info here! (-random dude in academia defending academia, ducks)