Largely agree, although, working for a PhD can have useful positive outcomes.<p>My own story follows:<p>I started the PhD in a UK university in the mid ‘1980s. I started it because it was the simplest course of action (staying at a comfortable uni) not because I wanted a career in academia, and I was fascinated by the subject (building a frame-based knowledge representation to support a first-order logic reasoner). Two other grads started at the same time, working on different aspects of the same project to get their PhDs. In retrospect it was a big mistake. The project devolved into uncontrolled software development (which I enjoyed) but we were in fact spending all our time building research tools (in C!) rather than using them to do research. Our mutual supervisor had no particular team leading experience and given that it had become a group project, we lacked the discipline of a proper software development lead. Our supervisor abruptly resigned in the third year to move to a new Uni and he didn’t offer to take us with him. I decided to cut my losses and took a research-programmer job in a different department of the same university. I used my spare time to write up my thesis to the extent that I could and submitted it as an M.Phil (so I did at least get a qualification from the whole experience). I then took a job at the advanced techniques department of a large UK engineering company, where I was introduced to Lisp-based tools that would have let me complete my PhD coding in months rather than years. And have worked in industry ever since.<p>My message to prospective PhD students is to do the PhD for the right reasons. Make sure that you understand the approach your supervisor will want you to follow and check with their other students before taking them on. Ask what their track record is, in terms of whether their students complete the PhDs. Make sure you understand what tools you will be using, and whether they are fit for purpose (i.e., for getting research outputs), and whether there is a supportive community of users in the facility.<p>The plus side is that I had a great time socialy, and learned software engineering the hard way, which led to a good job offer. But 25 years on, in industry, my actual qualifications are now irrelevant to my career development and progression.