career path - Is postdoc experience valued by industry?

I have recently finished my PhD and am currently considering my options. I have come to the conclusion that the teaching or the "publish or perish" nature of academia isn't really appealing for me.

I have been talking to several people regarding my thoughts and I have noticed an interesting difference in opinion; senior academics have been stressing the value of doing a post-doc before a potential move to industry, whereas industry contacts say that it's much better/easier to do the move to industry within two years from dissertation. I inquired further asking whether or not the postdoc years would be valued by companies, and the answer was essentially that:

unless the postdoc years are immediately relevant to the applied job, it wouldn't really give any seniority, as companies want to nurture their own culture and staying in academia for "too long" might lead to certain "habits" not appreciated in corporate world.

I want to get further opinions on the matter; is doing a postdoc valued by industry in general? The field is life sciences and bioinformatics, if it makes a difference..

Answer

There certainly is no "correct" answer to this question, as it depends on two factors: (1) the company (some will see it as useful, most probably won't), and (2) the type of postdoc (with or without management tasks? project lead? PI on a small project? independent or highly dependent of a professor?).

However, at least here in Switzerland and for Computer Science, the rule of thumb is that as soon as you are 100% that you won't stay in academia, every further month spent as a postdoc is inefficient in terms of career development. Yes, some companies may count your years as postdoc as some sort of relevant leadership experience, but most won't, and even those that do will consider a similar candidate with the same number of years working in industry to be much more attractive.

There is also another angle to look at this - you are currently looking to move into industry, and you have differing opinions from people that are already working in industry and people that are not. In absence of any other information, you should probably give more weight to the information provided by the insiders.