You are talking about "old tech". The new tech is an entirely different beast. The new tech is about producing photos styled as if it was painted by Van Gogh. I

You are talking about "old tech". The new tech is an entirely different beast. The new tech is about producing photos styled as if it was painted by Van Gogh. It's about rewriting sentence with correct grammar in word processor. It's about cooling billion dollar data center with highly complex architecture. It's about perfectly removing background from your photo even when it has your hair flying in the air. It's about perfectly translating voice to text and then searching vast knowledge graphs to answer questions. It's about beating world champions in games of highly complex strategy and tactics. You can't just throw bunch of great coders with high school diplomas at these problems and hope they would workout solutions. Solving any of above problems at the level we solve now would be considered pure magic and utterly surprising just a decade ago. These problems requires extensive mathematical modeling and leaning on research with incremental progress that has been collectively made by 100s of brilliant researchers over multiple decades. This is why PhD is desirable for "new tech".