&gt; You absolutely do not need a PhD for industry unless you want an R&amp;D job in a handful of domains.<p>I know Phd.s at {MSFT, Google, Uber, Deepmind, GE, P+G} research divisions. I don&#x27;t know anyone who works at those who does not have a doctorate. So I would say this applies to more than &#x27;a handful of domains&#x27; -- If you want to do research, you should plan on having a doctorate, even in industry. The majority of data scientists I know have doctorates, even if that strikes me as (generally) overkill.<p>Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your statements.