There is an easier answer, a much, much, much easier
and better answer: Nearly all of business and industry are still
organized as a hierarchy much like in the early
factories of Henry Ford where the supervisor is
supposed to know more and the subordinate is
supposed to know less and to add muscle to the work
of the supervisor.
If a supervisor has a subordinate that knows more,
then the subordinate can challenge and compete with
the supervisor on technical grounds, look more
qualified than the supervisor, and threaten the
supervisor's job. Academics has solutions to this
problem: An assistant professor can win a Nobel
prize without damage to the career of the department
chair. But industry has no solution.
More generally, a Ph.D. must report to another Ph.D.
or to the CEO of the company. Put this fact into
the connected, directed, acyclic graph of the
hierarchy of the organization chart and see the
consequences.
In particular, industry just will not, Not, NOT
evaluate qualifications in a reasonable way.
Instead, they tend to have a list of 'skills' and
want to check them off -- Java, JavaScript, PHP,
Python, Django, JSON, C++, Mongo, SQL Server, etc.
If you can code heap sort or an AVL tree on a white
board, okay.
This whole situation is part of a larger one:
Basically the US economy for 'careers' as hired
'employees' is nearly dead. So, GE, GM, AT&T, etc.
are no longer offering 'career paths'. Actually, a
career needs to last about 40 years which means
that, really, only rarely since the start of the
Industrial Revolution did large, US corporations
offer 'careers'.
The flip side of this situation is good news: The
role of a good Ph.D. with some interest in business
should be a company founder, get some 'traction',
then take a walk down Sand Hill Road and collect
some Series A checks. Use the Ph.D. and/or the
corresponding learning/talent for the crucial, core
'secret sauce' of the business. Then type in the
software and get the 'traction'. No one on Sand
Hill Road will question just what the heck your
qualifications were for typing in the software.
Then f'get about a 'job'. That is, if you want a
job, then create one for yourself. An advantage
here is that, just as a solid consequence of just
what you have seen, the big organizations will be
essentially helpless at doing work that duplicates
or equals yours.
One short term option is to be a contract employee.
That is, some company needs some SQL stored
procedures or some such written, so you write them.
One 'academic' solution may be to get a job in a
B-school that wants to have a good course or course
sequence in 'information technology'. There your
qualifications are fine.
The 'gap' is all on the side of industry, and it can
be taken advantage of.
You can tell the EE department at Stanford that a EE
Ph.D. can easily want to swap their degree for an
electrician's license.
Why? Because the Ph.D. needs a large organization
which is in international competition, and an
electrician with a license has a geographical
barrier to entry, can work in nearly any town of the
US, can't be fired, and can make money enough to buy
a house. For the EE Ph.D. in a large corporation,
he can be fired after a few years (because he didn't
get promoted into management -- only a small
fraction of new hires do) and find that the guy he
knew in high school mowing grass now has eight trucks
and 20 employees and is doing better than the Ph.D.
is.
If a supervisor has a subordinate that knows more, then the subordinate can challenge and compete with the supervisor on technical grounds, look more qualified than the supervisor, and threaten the supervisor's job. Academics has solutions to this problem: An assistant professor can win a Nobel prize without damage to the career of the department chair. But industry has no solution.
More generally, a Ph.D. must report to another Ph.D. or to the CEO of the company. Put this fact into the connected, directed, acyclic graph of the hierarchy of the organization chart and see the consequences.
In particular, industry just will not, Not, NOT evaluate qualifications in a reasonable way. Instead, they tend to have a list of 'skills' and want to check them off -- Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Django, JSON, C++, Mongo, SQL Server, etc. If you can code heap sort or an AVL tree on a white board, okay.
This whole situation is part of a larger one: Basically the US economy for 'careers' as hired 'employees' is nearly dead. So, GE, GM, AT&T, etc. are no longer offering 'career paths'. Actually, a career needs to last about 40 years which means that, really, only rarely since the start of the Industrial Revolution did large, US corporations offer 'careers'.
The flip side of this situation is good news: The role of a good Ph.D. with some interest in business should be a company founder, get some 'traction', then take a walk down Sand Hill Road and collect some Series A checks. Use the Ph.D. and/or the corresponding learning/talent for the crucial, core 'secret sauce' of the business. Then type in the software and get the 'traction'. No one on Sand Hill Road will question just what the heck your qualifications were for typing in the software.
Then f'get about a 'job'. That is, if you want a job, then create one for yourself. An advantage here is that, just as a solid consequence of just what you have seen, the big organizations will be essentially helpless at doing work that duplicates or equals yours.
One short term option is to be a contract employee. That is, some company needs some SQL stored procedures or some such written, so you write them.
One 'academic' solution may be to get a job in a B-school that wants to have a good course or course sequence in 'information technology'. There your qualifications are fine.
The 'gap' is all on the side of industry, and it can be taken advantage of.
You can tell the EE department at Stanford that a EE Ph.D. can easily want to swap their degree for an electrician's license.
Why? Because the Ph.D. needs a large organization which is in international competition, and an electrician with a license has a geographical barrier to entry, can work in nearly any town of the US, can't be fired, and can make money enough to buy a house. For the EE Ph.D. in a large corporation, he can be fired after a few years (because he didn't get promoted into management -- only a small fraction of new hires do) and find that the guy he knew in high school mowing grass now has eight trucks and 20 employees and is doing better than the Ph.D. is.