Nice read. Speaking as a PhD I am okay with the PhD certificate having no value (you don't deserve extra earnings for having the certificate). It was my intent to learn some valuable things during the degree process, and I did.
There are a decent number of ding dongs in PhD programs too. The level of ding dong-ery doesn't seem to change wherever you go.
Besides, in the UK at least the scholarship funding is not bad at all. I found the £12K per year tax free funding was easily enough to be comfortable on whilst doing my research.
I spent three years in a computational biology PhD program before getting an e-mail from a college friend looking for people to join a new startup (where I am now a co-founder). I enjoyed the research I was doing, but I asked myself: should I really spend three more years here toiling away at very cool but very obscure science just to purchase a lottery ticket? Where if I lose the lottery (which is the most likely result by far) I will have languished in postdoc roles until I burnt out past my prime?
You have a lot of energy between age 25 and 35. I decided to apply that energy to something where the expected value of total reward (both intellectually and monetarily) is much higher.
Oh man, +1,000,000. As someone who made the other choice from the same position you were in, this is exactly the advice I give to any fresh-faced grad student who gets all glassy-eyed and weak-minded in the face of doing "cool research" for some wonk professor for years while letting the real world slide by in the background.
You don't realize it when you're 22, but you've only got so much irrational exuberance and tolerance for crazy work schedules in reserve. Once that phase of your life is gone, it's gone, and you'll never get it back. Also, your friends are all moving on, too: the people with whom you can do things like co-found companies won't be in the same risk-tolerance categories when you're finally done with your research-based vacation from life.
During the time I was getting a PhD, I missed out on the second-biggest technology wealth creation event of my lifetime. My best friends -- the guys with whom I'd want to found companies -- got older, married, and had children. They're not able to take risks like that now. The world is harder and more expensive.
Now I'm working in the technology industry anyway, and I look around the world and see younger guys who are VP or C-level roles, leading large teams, and otherwise further along on the career ladder. But I have a PhD.
Now, my friends, who have finished, are either super depressed about (not) finding academic jobs or have moved to other fields entirely. Pretty sad.
I made more of a lateral move within my field, so am hoping for better results, but that has its own set of challenges.
Look on the bright side: your PhD is an insurance policy against ageism. When you are 50 you will still be able to find (or make for yourself) low-risk, high-paying work doing neat technical stuff. The VP and C-level peers that you envy so much now will essentially be managers for the rest of their lives.
Yes, life is always a dice roll. The difference is that one of the two bets has a much higher positive expectation. Done intelligently, neither choice will leave you destitute, but entrepreneurship could leave you rich.
I don't beat myself up over past choices that I can't change -- but I try to make my point forcefully to people who are about to go down the same blind alleys that I already know well.
The problem is far less in Computer Science, where your skills transfer over to The Real World relatively easily, and companies like Microsoft and Google value them. This means the potential job pool is much bigger.
As a CS PhD student, of course I feel underpaid. Universities have reached a point where they can convince students that what they are doing is being paid for being taught, which must be a great deal, right? However, everyone else calls this "on the job training" or "starting at the bottom of the ladder" and they get paid better for it. However, I think about the benefits I get (work when/where I like, use whatever language I like, nap when I like, release all my work as open-source, never feel like I'm waking up to "work", don't have to worry about mundane but potentially catastrophic life things like health insurance), and it does even out somewhat.