This is BS. I was in the room during the doctoral defense of an experimental student who got his PhD and went to work for Lam Research and he couldn’t answer any of the theory questions I asked him about his work without my prompting. Why does it need a PhD, because the companies don’t want to train you on the job?
US PhD students... and US labour market in general..
I always had a feeling of it being rather skewed towards the top. Top US companies are being too spoiled by the labour market. They are too used to the idea of being able to recruit people who they think are on the top of the ladder of educational achievement.
Instead, they often just employ expensive, and not that much better cadres.
Such emphasis on "talent" in US is because US companies cannot do much with regular hires these days, always thinking they can get ready made specialists from the job market.
When the entirety of employers start to think this way, and just headhunt increasingly more expensive, and barely experienced people from each other, then things start to go downhill.
