| >My point was a PhD alone should not be taken as an indicator of skill That's not what you wrote, though. And, all else equal, I suspect a PhD is a good indicator of skill. With no info, hiring for someone to solve math problems, which do you think will be better: math PhD or not math PhD? Again, please provide some empirical evidence for your claims; not anecdotal feelings. There's a reason starting salaries for PhDs are much higher than non for almost all positions, and it's not because hiring people are ignorant. >no substitute for good evidence of ability It's pretty hard to impossible to get one from a decent school without well above average ability. >This is why things like basic leetcode interviews are so important, "phds" will often fail these. Do they fail them more than non-phds? By how much? Again, please provide evidence. I'd suspect non-phds do much worse on average than phds. I know for a fact PhDs score far higher on Kaggle competitions, for example. PhDs are over-represented in the winners, and if you look into the winners, a lot more without PhDs are PhD students. Go ahead an look there to check for yourself. Heck, Kaggle even has a data mining degree vs pay dataset, and guess what? Check for yourself https://www.kaggle.com/salmanq/do-phds-earn-more I'm pretty sure you're running on selection bias, not quantified measurements. |
And it's well known that if you are smart and start working out of undergrad instead of getting a phd you usually end up significantly ahead in terms of earnings and on the corporate ladder.