I'd love more info about what happened during the interview process at each of the 20 jobs the author applied for.
I can definitely imagine a situation (and being a recruiter, have seen situations) where a PhD will keep you from getting your foot in the door. There can be concerns about the ability to actually write code, the ability to be practical, to be OK with working with unclean data, the ability to get stuff out the door and have a hacker mentality, etc etc.
However, these concerns tend to arise BEFORE starting the interview process. Once your foot is in the door, unless there's a huge disconnect between the people doing the hiring and the people doing the filtering or unless the job description changes midstream, how you do in interviews is more important than your background.
> There can be concerns about the ability to actually write code, the ability to be practical, to be OK with working with unclean data, the ability to get stuff out the door and have a hacker mentality, etc etc.
These all seem to be concerns of someone who does not what doing a PhD entails, really.
I can definitely imagine a situation (and being a recruiter, have seen situations) where a PhD will keep you from getting your foot in the door. There can be concerns about the ability to actually write code, the ability to be practical, to be OK with working with unclean data, the ability to get stuff out the door and have a hacker mentality, etc etc.
However, these concerns tend to arise BEFORE starting the interview process. Once your foot is in the door, unless there's a huge disconnect between the people doing the hiring and the people doing the filtering or unless the job description changes midstream, how you do in interviews is more important than your background.