American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs
I worked with a bunch of a Ph.Ds at Google, and my dad had one.  I myself have nothing more than a bachelor&#x27;s, and no desire to get anything more.<p>I&#x27;ve heard and observed that the Ph.D teaches you one crucial skill - how to take a vaguely defined research problem that nobody has done before, where you&#x27;re not even sure that a solution exists, and make tangible, rigorous progress on it.  Your actual doctoral topic as a Ph.D student will probably be useless.  Most of your coursework is the same as what any master&#x27;s degree gives you.  But the experience that sets you apart from B.S. and M.S. graduates is that of slogging through a dissertation, trying to make an original contribution to knowledge.<p>There are other ways to develop this skillset.  Founding a company does it as well, as does developing a new product from scratch.  High-level creative work (eg. writing a novel, getting traction for your band, producing a theatrical performance or radio show) does as well.  Companies love to hire candidates from these backgrounds as well, but most don&#x27;t want to work for someone else.  (Interestingly, depression and anxiety might actually be a feature of developing this skillset, not a bug - these two mental disorders are endemic among these fields as well.)<p>The reason employers get hung up on this is because the economic returns to innovation are at an all-time high these days, and so developing that blockbuster new product or highly-efficient new process makes a lot of money.  And part of the reason returns to innovation are so high is because so few people are actually innovating.  While there certainly exist people with just a bachelors or even no degree at all who are capable of innovating, a large number of bachelor&#x27;s holders do not have the toolset or mental fortitude to break out beyond what everybody else knows and create <i>new</i> knowledge.