I agree for me personally. Also, the proportion of concepts that become products is much higher being corporate in my experience. As a consultant you almost felt lucky if something went to production that only half watered down the original intent. On the corporate side you have more control or at least influence over what and how something productizes. You are in the room for the compromises, making sure the best job possible is being done to preserve the intent (hopefully) and when something is killed, you are there for that too, and hopefully part of the process. Not every idea that is good on paper is good in reality. It is hard to realize that as a consultant sometimes, but in a corporate environment where you live with consequences of your actions, you understand and even sometimes vote to kill some of your own concepts. In the corporate environment a good design solution can mean fat bonuses for everyone, and a mistake can mean massive QA issues, inventory management problems, delays, lost revenue, missed forecasts… if you don’t go through that, it can be very difficult to truly empathize with your clients.
I’ve consulted for 6.5 years (4.5 years out of school and then 2 years later on) and the second time I was much more productive, which ended up getting me back to corporate so fast. I’ve been in corporate for a total of about 9.5 years, with just too companies, but the experiences were similar.
I recommend spending time on both sides. On the consulting side you will hone your skills, learn how to work fast, and hopefully mix with some very high caliber talent, your time will also be focused almost exclusively on design. In corporate you will learn a host of other skills like organizational management, production issues, understanding a single industry and market very deeply, and including having the accountability I wrote about above. Working on both sides for a bit can be very beneficial.