You can gain a lot of education working on a phd at a good school, even past your masters, and that can help if you are doing more sophisticated stuff. I found

You can gain a lot of education working on a phd at a good school, even past your masters, and that can help if you are doing more sophisticated stuff. I found my phd helped a lot in my dev work at microsoft and google. Maybe someone with a lot strong BS or MS could have done it, but I benefited from my 8 years at grad school! I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how long it took, but I did finally finish :-)