Some PhDs are useful outside of academia. Many are not. It really depends on what you work on, your personality, and what other skills you have. I have spent much of my career in academia adjacent roles, and most of the time, there is far too great of emphasis on the PhD and not enough on the skills to do the job that needs doing. I think our researchers would benefit greatly from better support staff in the form of engineers, programmers, and so on rather than letting those tasks fall to postdocs or even grad students. I suspect your "research division of a big corporation" had those other roles supporting you and your colleagues. Academia generally does not.

I often see PhDs filling roles that really do not require a PhD. Does that mean that the PhD was a waste? No, not necessarily, but was it the best allocation of resources?