FWIW, Peter Norvig was asked at an intern tech talk at Google "Do I need a PhD to work at Google?" and he replied "No, and most of the people here don't have one. What we are looking to hire is people who have the original thinking mindset that makes them able to do PhDs, even if they haven't done one."
When you're working at Google/Facebook/Microsoft you're working on problems that are new to you, even if they aren't new to the rest of the company. You're learning, which is the fun bit of research. Many of the products you will work on may never have been attempted at the size/scale you are going for, and so that's research.
Industry has a lot of the R of R&D, you just need to recognize it when it's happening.
When you're working at Google/Facebook/Microsoft you're working on problems that are new to you, even if they aren't new to the rest of the company. You're learning, which is the fun bit of research. Many of the products you will work on may never have been attempted at the size/scale you are going for, and so that's research.
Industry has a lot of the R of R&D, you just need to recognize it when it's happening.