In some areas like biotech, a PhD is almost a union card to work in large corporations doing R&D. Without it, sadly, you won't be taken seriously.
There used to be BA-level research jobs. There still are. They're just now filled by PhDs. Basic research is pretty much gone.
Pedigree bigotry is the natural reaction of a society or subculture in decline. When the future is hopeless and the present is uninspiring, people obsess about the past. PhD Bigotry is a way for the brilliant but passed-over (through no fault of their own) to reminisce about the days when they were young and clueless and thought society-at-large gave a shit about anything other than crass commercialism.
Personally, I prefer to bet on the future. Simply due to resource limitations, we'll need to reinvest in basic research if we don't want human extinction (or at least the collapse of civilization). But that is a bet, and we're going to have to demolish some entrenched players in order to have one.
Universities will continue to exist, and will do great research, along with being an excellent babysitter for 18-30 year olds who have the means to purchase a babysitter while they focus on their academics (or not). But more and more research will happen outside of the Academy, because research is useful. And for many kinds of research, there are easier ways to get it done than getting a PhD. And that trend will increase.
And the University will lose its place as the de-facto spot for kids and researchers to go.
Don't look down on those "just want a job" people. When you don't have an income, the need to get one consumes you. Working "for passion" is a luxury of trust-fund kids and people who pulled off their exits before the Valley became a scam.
The idea that it's dishonorable to work for money is classism. Most people have no other choice.
But more and more research will happen outside of the Academy, because research is useful.
Sadly, we see the opposite trend. Research inside and outside of academia is melting down. Companies use the results of R&D (open-source software is an R&D effort) and buy "innovation" out of a rigged R&D-ish system (the VC-funded Valley) but no one is paying for it, which means that very little of quality is being built at scale.
Something will bring it back, but it will probably start outside of the US. It will probably involve competition at an international level. I'd love to see it take a friendly form: an all-information-shared (the objective being prestige, not dominance over others) 21st-century moon-shot race between North America, Europe, and Asia on curing cancer. Sadly, history shows that it's just as likely to involve war, because humans are perilously stupid.
Until that happens, I feel like technical excellence is such a nonpriority in this country that it shouldn't surprise anyone that Stanford threw its weight behind Clinkle and Snapchat.
The prestige competition between universities may have had that effect at one time, but now they compete on stupid shit like pampering rich douchebags, overpaying top administrators, and funding idiotic startups like Clinkle as a way of selling "the experience" (your kid might be made founder of the next Snapchat!)
But I don't. Instead, I'm studying Haskell. On a Sunday night. Including all the random stuff I read just because I'm passionate about technology, I probably work 70 hours per week. (Much of that's self-directed and career-oriented; working more than 30-40 without a career payoff is a chump's game.)
Why is this? Why do I side with the team (technologists, as opposed to douchebags) that seems to be losing? Because I think the good guys are going to win, and that actual technical knowledge is going to become an important asset again. It might be 10 or 20 years from now, but I think it will happen.
It's worth noting, however, that many of them also believe that the world is on fire and they're not afraid if other people get soaked in the process of saving the damn thing. It's just that their solutions - like stack ranking, restructurings, org structures, etc. - tend to soak engineers like you, while your solutions - like open allocation or programmer's unions - tend to soak managers and consultants like them.
Spot on! The reason for the angst is that typically management and consultants call the shots and the software developers are ignored.
It is incredibly frustrating when your company pulls in consultants, who have spent all of a week studying up on your company and industry, after ignoring staff who have been pointing out the key problems for months.
Anyways, the solution isn't to complain. It's to become CEO, or management, or wherever the decision-making power rests, and then listen better than average executive does. This is behind the "software is eating the world" thesis and many of the fortunes that have been made in the last 20 years; the extreme cluelessness of decision-makers has created a number of exploitable market opportunities that you can attack with persistence and better information.
I strongly support the michaelochurch's of the industry because if we actually saw the kind of changes they speak of on a large scale we would be decades ahead technologically and the vast majority of people would be better off.
However, people who complain "in the small" and do nothing about it are perpetuating the existing system.
E.g. If you know key decisions are made outside of and before meetings then work within that system to get what you want.
Or if people get hired based on who they know then spend a little bit of time each month networking. The number of chumps I know who complain about this but never network is insane.
Or if you have expert knowledge of a critical legacy system then make sure you are compensated appropriately. $500k/year is nothing compared to the cost of replacing you in the short term (4-5 years). Or you could leverage your expertise into a decent management role.
Look, I don't know the guy - apparently he worked for Google for a (very) short time, had a semi-public falling out with a bunch of people there, and since then got into a couple of nasty flamewars with Google'ers (and others, from what I can tell) here and elsewhere. I don't care one way or the other really, to me (and to many regulars here, methinks) he's like one of those street preachers wearing 'repent now' and 'the devil is amongst us' buttons; a part of the urban scenery that is best not engaged with, lest you'll spend the rest of your day going back-and-forth in an 'argument' that can't be 'won' (even for the most lenient definition of 'won').
But if I'm mistaking the GP for somebody else, my apologies.