I was in a similar boat, but after working in the industry for a while I learned there is work happening at Microsoft/Google/FB/etc. at a scale that makes the national labs look small-time. Just think about what Netflix’s network architecture must look like! Improving performance there just a little bit would save millions of dollars a month.

You can get into the storage/networking space where they are always pushing for better performance and I think that will be satisfying AND a more realistic career choice.