I'm a prof in the CS department at a big university who is unusually interested in how real people actually build real things, which is why I follow this site. Sorry if I sound like a prof - it's an occupational hazard. In a field like CS, the BS or MS degrees are oriented to prepare people for doing real work. The wiser profs know that at most they can help people get a good start; most of the knowledge and skills will be acquired on the job. In contrast, the PhD is a research degree - the goal is to demonstrate that you are capable of adding to the academic or theoretical content of the field, by doing a piece of "original research" under the guidance of experienced researchers, the faculty. In CS, "research" generally is supposed to be theoretical or methodological advances, not solutions to specific practical problems - it's the opposite of product development. One usually ends up being hyper-specialized, and often with few practical skills beyond those you got at the BS or MS level. The jobs PhD holders are thus being prepared for are researchy jobs - like high-level R&D, or being a university research prof (if you also like to teach). In other words, don't expect to gain practical software development wisdom from getting a PhD. Also, you don't get a PhD to make more money - it requires a great amount of thought and determination to get the PhD; the same effort applied more directly in the work world will usually produce a much higher income - especially by taking on management responsibilities. Rather you get a PhD because you want to spend more of your time on research problems - which not everybody likes to do. The problem with trying to discover new knowledge is that you fail much more often than you succeed, which is frustrating - you have to be a least somewhat strange to actually enjoy this. This means that most people who like to actually build useful or fun systems will profit most with the BS or MS degree together with learning as much as possible from the best people in the field - who are usually not academics.