As a 5th grade dropout who is a fully self-taught developer, I did Interview, mentor, and supervised a multiple of developers with masters and PhDs to help them understand and get comfortable in the real world of the IT industry, sure they are probably "smarter", faster researchers, more organized than me but I have the experience to put together the big picture, cover the edge cases, account for common mistakes in the domain, understand the market and the clients mentality etc... most of that won't be covered by a PhD.

Noone started his career with a bunch of experience, you'll get boring jobs, you'll encounter annoying bosses or clients, you'll have stress and deadlines pressure, you'll be forced to develop things that don't match "your idea" of quality, you'll probably have some imposter syndrome... these are just common parts of the industry especially for newcomers.

The best advice would be if you're not looking to go into academia then don't go for PhD, it's a waste of time you can use that time to grind through the industry and get that experience. Another important thing IMHO is that no matter how cool your field is, no matter how much you like it, if it fells under the deadlines, pressure, and stress wheel you'll not enjoy it, you'll find something else that seems more fun and you'll wish if you can do that instead!

I would say if you want maximum fun and then have fun on side-projects, open-source, or freelance on the side