For those interested about income during PhD <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.phdstipends.com&#x2F;results" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.phdstipends.com&#x2F;results</a> gives a good overview of PhD stipends offered by most Universities. A grad student at MIT CS doing a summer internship with Google etc. should typically gross at least 54,000$.<p>Another point that is often overlooked is that if you want a good team at Google &#x2F; Apple such as working on autonomous car or deep learning etc. you have better chance going if you have a PhD in similar area. I agree that a PhD in Theory&#x2F;PL is much more a life of mind rather than Machine Learning&#x2F;Vision&#x2F;Systems which can be justified as a bet on possibility of a future payout. I know several students at Cornell who joined Google&#x2F;FB after BS only to be placed in not very interesting teams and later decided to join the PhD program. I think if played correctly a PhD from a good CS school to an extent can help you avoid some of risks faced by middle-aged programmers. Especially those who do not wish to transition into management roles.<p>Personally I am doing a PhD (Information Science &#x2F; large scale data mining for healthcare), since I had guaranteed funding along with access to a large medical dataset that would have been impossible to get without being in academia.