After hiring many industry researchers at MSc and PhD level, I think the ones with PhDs are better researchers. The knowledge they gained of their niche subjec

After hiring many industry researchers at MSc and PhD level, I think the ones with PhDs are better researchers. The knowledge they gained of their niche subject is not that important but their ability to do research is very important. If you need to do complex multi year research projects (e.g. developing new machine learning algorithms), a PhD is useful. It teaches you how to plan research, break through research blockages and communicate with others to a degree very difficult to gain in any other way.