Most PhDs are all R and no D. And you don’t necessarily need to build up a record of publications to do real world R&D outside of academia. In my experience ha

Most PhDs are all R and no D. And you don’t necessarily need to build up a record of publications to do real world R&D outside of academia. In my experience having a PhD is just a crude filter for employers, because what else are you going to rely on? But unless the PhD thesis was in the exact same area as the real world R&D (quite rare), you can assume that a newly minted PhD will not be hitting the ground running.