Hello all,

I'm an international graduate student (in Canada) who is about to finish his master's degree. I have done well and published 3 first author papers so far, while a further three are under submission. I have also maintained a GPA of 3.9. This was mostly a combination of being lucky and working in a field of research with some low-hanging fruit.

Up until now, I have been mostly set on pursuing a PhD at the same lab. However, a few things are starting to give me a pause. I joined this lab because I was not able to work in the field I desired (Computer Vision / Machine Learning). As I reach the end of my degree, I feel like life is short and I should go back to what I really wanted to do and join a Machine Learning lab. Secondly, my advisor is not healthy to be around (can be malicious, does not understand emotional well-being of other people, micromanaging students). Third, my advisor also does not seem to possess any significant knowledge about what we do in the lab and truthfully all students mainly go to a post-doc for advice. Fourth, my advisor is running a company and all the research we do benefits the company directly. This results in my advisor being only concerned about publications and conferences. The technical work we do is not given a lot of significance and the "degree milestones" (such as thesis, thesis defence) are barely discussed.

Bearing that in mind, I feel like I'm out of options. If I consider a PhD elsewhere, most of the schools here (understandably) require a letter of reference from my master's advisor. I worry that this letter will not be favourable because my advisor can be malicious.

The other option is to just continue here for my PhD. I think if I can manage to keep my sanity around him, I will do well. I understand the research well now, find it interesting, and I am to contribute so it will likely be a good PhD at the end. However, it is a niche field - where do I go afterwards? Work at his company? Industry is nonexistent in this area.

What should I do?