It's certainly true that there are reasons for getting a PhD other than becoming a professor, but it's also true that in many fields having a PhD is also comple

It's certainly true that there are reasons for getting a PhD other than becoming a professor, but it's also true that in many fields having a PhD is also completely unnecessary. And yet in many fields there seems to a qualification arms race where, due to the glut of PhDs and lack of jobs where PhDs are truly required, jobs for which a PhD is not necessary or beneficial are starting to become expected. I've definitely begun to see this in the fields of machine learning and data science. I'm sure other fields are similar.