[versteegen]

I know someone who was doing a PhD on neural networks, and interned at Google during it (a research group involving NNs). He was told by that research team that they wouldn't hire him without his completed phd. He cut his phd short to a masters and got a job at Google anyway, but unfortunately I can't remember whether it was on that research team, or a generic software-engineer position (either way, the internship was the foot in the door).

You can certainly do good independent work, and write and publish papers if you want. If you can prove your conpetence, why shouldn't you be hired? At least, not every employer is going to have a major bias against those without PhDs.