There are some areas of CS that are more along those lines. They're less common in the industries represented on HN, though. One example that comes to mind is

There are some areas of CS that are more along those lines. They're less common in the industries represented on HN, though. One example that comes to mind is graphics: places like Pixar and ILM heavily hire PhDs for R&D work, developing rendering algorithms and infrastructure and the like. They do also hire non-PhDs, but without some equivalent research track record (e.g. a SIGGRAPH paper or two), usually not for R&D jobs. I hadn't actually counted before, but if you go to http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html and look at the bios, 9 out of the 11 have a PhD, and there are more outside the formal research division.