Exactly: it is very wrong to think PhD are useless because you won't use what you did during your PhD. This is stupid on two accounts: even if you do an academic career, what you did during your PhD is rarely what you will do later, and PhD teaches you many other things.
I only realized it afterwards, but many people are simply incapable of working by themselves without being given precise instruction: PhD teaches you that in some way (of course, there is a selection bias). It also trains you to communicate to other, which is a very valuable skill. You are also used to being criticized on somehow objective criterion: few people are able to take critics in any other way than personal. Finally, you almost always learn tenacity.
For me, saying that PhD is a bubble because there are few academics positions is like saying being an entrepreneur is a bubble because so few people become very rich. Even failure teach you a lot (where failure would be defined as not becoming an academic in the PhD case).
+1 for "you almost always learn tenacity". I've seen many good and bad Ph.D. students, but in the end, the ones who got their Ph.D. were the tenacious ones, not necessarily the best or brightest ones.
This is a really good point. The importance of good written and oral communication skills is often downplayed but likely one of the most important in the workplace.
I only realized it afterwards, but many people are simply incapable of working by themselves without being given precise instruction: PhD teaches you that in some way (of course, there is a selection bias). It also trains you to communicate to other, which is a very valuable skill. You are also used to being criticized on somehow objective criterion: few people are able to take critics in any other way than personal. Finally, you almost always learn tenacity.
For me, saying that PhD is a bubble because there are few academics positions is like saying being an entrepreneur is a bubble because so few people become very rich. Even failure teach you a lot (where failure would be defined as not becoming an academic in the PhD case).