The story that I've heard isn't that companies don't like to hire PhDs, but that you can get a pretty solid job with a nice salary, work there for six years, an

The story that I've heard isn't that companies don't like to hire PhDs, but that you can get a pretty solid job with a nice salary, work there for six years, and then you've earned six years of nice money, you have six years of experience, and between that and raises it's not hard to find yourself in a pretty solid job with a pretty nice salary. Alternatively, you can get a PhD, spend six years living on a stipend, and get hired into a pretty solid job with a pretty nice salary. Best case is that you end up in the same place as the folks who didn't get the PhD, but they have six years of earnings and savings behind them, and you're not getting paid enough to make up that deficit. I was offered a chance to become a PhD candidate and they were very clear that it wouldn't drastically increase my earning potential and that the opportunity cost would be pretty high; the benefits they quoted at me were things like the opportunity to do the cutting edge research myself instead of reading about it, a chance to meet a bunch of people who would become the titans of the field, and a chance to stay in the environment of academia.