That's not what you wrote, though.
And, all else equal, I suspect a PhD is a good indicator of skill.
With no info, hiring for someone to solve math problems, which do you think will be better: math PhD or not math PhD?
Again, please provide some empirical evidence for your claims; not anecdotal feelings.
There's a reason starting salaries for PhDs are much higher than non for almost all positions, and it's not because hiring people are ignorant.
>no substitute for good evidence of ability
It's pretty hard to impossible to get one from a decent school without well above average ability.
>This is why things like basic leetcode interviews are so important, "phds" will often fail these.
Do they fail them more than non-phds? By how much? Again, please provide evidence. I'd suspect non-phds do much worse on average than phds.
I know for a fact PhDs score far higher on Kaggle competitions, for example. PhDs are over-represented in the winners, and if you look into the winners, a lot more without PhDs are PhD students. Go ahead an look there to check for yourself.
Heck, Kaggle even has a data mining degree vs pay dataset, and guess what? Check for yourself https://www.kaggle.com/salmanq/do-phds-earn-more
I'm pretty sure you're running on selection bias, not quantified measurements.
