There's a lot of (understandable given the user base) bias in HN towards startups and the software industry, where you don't exactly need a PhD to crank out the

There's a lot of (understandable given the user base) bias in HN towards startups and the software industry, where you don't exactly need a PhD to crank out the next social media app or whatever. Therefore people will emit opinions based on their experiences, which might explain the negativity that you perceive. However, as you point out, in pretty much any other field of engineering, PhD hires are a most if you are pushing the frontier and producing genuine research.