Your point about PhDs is spot on. I’m increasingly seeing job postings with PhD asks for software and ent architecture roles that don’t seem to articulate the need for the PhD. Anecdotally it seems PhDs are also getting dragged into the credential race.
Hiring someone who's spent ten years in academia to design the architecture of real-world systems sounds like a very reliable way of getting terrible architectures. What are they smoking, are people with actual experience just way too expensive?
PhDs seem to me to be for quantifiable knowledge. They imbue highly specialised skills and imply a huge understanding of technical literature. But they structurally can't imbue skills that are nebulous. They can only teach things that are either consensus, or easy to evaluate academically.
You're confusing a Ph.D with an extension of a BS.
A Ph.D requires independent creation of new knowledge, and being able to go deep in a field. That's neither consensus, nor easy to evaluate academically. It's far more nebulous than most industry work. In many cases, they also require deep algorithmic and mathematical maturity.
A freshly-brewed Ph.D isn't going to be an expert in the mechanics of software engineering (e.g. setting up CI/CD, microservices, etc.), but will outclass most people with BS degrees in other areas. 5-10 years down-the-line, they will pick up the applied skills, while the BS won't pick up the theoretical skills.
Ph.D is also a signalling mechanisms: They were admitted, and they finished.
I'm not arguing for or against Ph.Ds, but your stereotypes seem grounded in, well, nothing. Ph.Ds have their problems, but those ain't them.
The knowledge created by a PhD by definition has to be evaluated academically. If it can't be evaluated by peers, it can't be published.
I don't mean this in a superficial sense, I mean: there's no way for a PhD to be certified for investigating the kind of knowledge that's difficult to verify in that context. They can investigate it, but the system is only allowed to give them a qualification for academically verifiable results. It cannot verify esoteric knowledge (unless it can use consensus as a proxy).
Sure, they'll pick that stuff up with experience. We might be talking past each other. I read it as: they're hiring graduates. That might not be what OP meant.
The evaluation process is quite sophisticated, with thesis committees, talks, reviews, etc.
That's much more sophisticated than for software engineers. I'm not trying to imply SEs are evaluated by sprint planning points and velocity, but a lot of that comes down to sprint planning points and velocity. Beyond that, you have performance reviews, and I've never been in a company which did that well.
Code reviews are nice. But even a lot of that is pattern matching sanity checks, little better than a lint program, when a team is rushed.
I mean, do Ph.Ds know how to architect maintainable code? Perhaps not. Have they been encultured in a culture which rewards cowboy individualistic douchebags? Without a doubt. Are they arrogantly convinced of their own superiority? For the first few years after graduating, at least from the "better" schools, more likely than not, yes.
But I think your comments about lacking esoteric knowledge are completely off-base. Ph.Ds thrive on esoteric knowledge.
Maybe that will at least encourage some US universities to offer shorter PhDs like in Europe, where one year masters degree followed by two years PhD for a total of three years postgraduate isn't uncommon.
In Europe it is far more common to have 1.5-2 year masters degrees (half a year saved by overloading) followed by a 3-4 year PhD. It is almost a universal truth that a PhD shouldn't take less than 3 years unless there are exceptional circumstances.
I honestly can't believe any credible university is turning bachelor degree students into doctors within 3 years. Would love to see an example.
I have never heard of 2 year phds anywhere in Europe and I'm in European academia, working a lot in European projects so I have quite a bit of exposure to academic cultures across the continent. Nominal time is 4 years, 3 years is already something special. And a masters doesn't count towards this, not having a masters is basically not having finished your studies, nobody I know would hire a phd student straight out of their bachelors.
Yeah, this is completely inaccurate, as other comments are also saying. Indeed, PhDs are shorter in Europe, but getting a PhD in 2 years is not just uncommon, but next to impossible. Credible universities won't even let you defend that early (bar exceptional circumstances). Never mind 3 years, most students go well into their 4th (occasionally 5th) year to finish. The difference with the US being that in Europe the funding typically runs out after 3/4 years, so after that students have to "improvise".
As I understand it, in Europe they give phd students canned projects to work on, which are designed to only take a couple years. It's just the whole plan of how long they want it to take. In the US doing a project of that size may be enough to get by at some schools, but it generally isn't supposed to be.
It's absurd to try to say how it is in Europe. You can't even say how it is overall in Germany. There are various different arrangements with companies, research centers like Max Planck, universities, some are full (state) employee positions, some are half, some give stipends, some take 3 years, some 4 or 5, some make you teach courses, some don't.
Depends on country, field, particular university or company, even the department.
So you can't generalize over a whole continent.
I am not sure what you are referring to, but a PhD in Europe takes 3/4 years. They are generally organised such that you are tied to a single supervisor/research group, which might be where the confusion comes from? They are by no means canned projects, at least as far I know.
