I think the best developers are often the ones that simply have a detailed understanding of their domain's fundamentals. These are the people that could spend an hour answering a simple question like "What happens when you type 'ls' in a terminal?" in absolute excruciating detail.

In my experience, this is exactly the type of thing that PhDs generally don't know, and are often no longer curious enough to learn.

Whenever I am a hiring manager, I am pretty openly biased against hiring PhDs. They definitely start at a disadvantage compared to a highschool dropout in a hiring interview with me.