As a grad student, I worked for someone who essentially was 'independently scientifically wealthy', insomuch as he could buy whatever he wanted, work on whatever he wanted, and didn't have a funding agency to answer to. This was really good, because I could order anything I wanted. Also, when he was in a bad mood, he'd 'shop'. Occasionally, I'd find 'gifts' in the lab when he and I had a knock-down, drag-out fight. (One of these was an automated miniprep machine that sucked ass.) Essentially, we could do whatever we wanted money wise (as long as it didn't have a bio-rad label on it.)

The disadvantage to this is that the boss wasn't pressured for publications. He also had weird rules. Students weren't allowed to write book chapers/reviews. You had to present him with an outline and storyboard of figured prior to starting any experiments, and if your data didn't match (not answer wise, but experiment wise) you would have to redo it. (I once made a mistake of combining a flow cytometry experiment...). You couldn't use red and green and blue in the same graph. There were...hoops...that you had to jump through, and you'd have to start the circuit all over again if  you nicked on.

From the first draft to the 32nd draft (I'm not kidding) of my only paper, there was a span of 2.5 years. There's another paper that he's been sitting on since I graduated and I will revoke my name from if he ever finishes it the way he wants to (he wants to add someone to authorship because she's in the lab).

Even given that I didn't want to go into academia, I had to answer the question about why I didn't publish. I could blame the PI, which I kind of think seems off in an interview. I could hem and haw. Basically, what I came down to was this.

"Yes, I know that I have a rather sparse publication record. It really comes down to 2 things: 1, I was working on the boss's pet project, and 2, Because we were a for profit lab, we had a lot of money, so we got to do a lot of really fun, but not necessarily publishable science. What I lack in publications, I make up for in technical expertise."

I've always thought that this was the best course of action. I'm not bad-mouthing anyone. I'm making a reasonable argument. I am also highlighting that I'm not a moron.

I've never come up with a better way of saying this. My post-doc advisor was much, much better in this respect.