I think this is also highly relevant to perceptions of the value of higher education within programmer circles.
I can see how CMU's Systems or Theory courses might seem like a complete waste of time outside of the Industry Cluster, where you really don't need to know all that stuff. But I also see the fairly obscene 10x+ difference between the "first job out of undergrad at NoName" programmer salaries and the "first job out of PhD school at MIT" programmer salaries.
In the terms of your first comment, the suggestion is that fresh bachelors trying to work in humanities don't get jobs. MIT was not mentioned.
A PhD in English lit or whatever basically only makes sense if you want to teach and that's not a great track these days.
>> 10x
In many countries PhDs are only valuable in academia and industrial research institutes, but your salary is capped quite a bit long term.
In Asia a new grad fresh out of college is seen as more employable than a new PhD grad by most companies and salary differences would be minimal. I wouldn't recommend doing a PhD if you're out for a high salary there.
On the other hand in some European countries just having any PhD degree will open up career paths and salaries unavailable to non PhDs regardless of actual skills.
I know as I started work at the worlds leading Research association for hydrodynamics and left for the commercial world as the pay was so bad.
You will not easily be reaching upper management without a PhD.
I can’t think of any C levels or one level below that aren’t credentialed as such.