PhD - Is it worth me doing it?

How about 40-50 hour work weeks filled with mundane point and click?
Not to mention the that you will not get the same advanced training as if you did a PHD. However my point is simply to think twice before accepting that industry experience is more important than a PHD. Like I said, it might be for getting that 70,000 - 90,000$ coding job but these jobs might not be as much fun or rewarding as you imagine them to be, and there is kind of a low ceiling given the amount of skill involved.

You dont always get a job that can give you any feel good factor. In fact the chances are that you wont. The chances are that your day will be filled with unbelievable mundane tediousness... Compared to the day of a research PHD student certainly!

Ummm I dont really know what you mean by qualitative CS PHD? Maybe an example might help. The things CS PHDs get very good at are mathematics, algorithms, and applying this to things like AI, computational biology, machine learning, etc.

When companies want to get some one to solve the serious problems efficenctly, and to design algorithms, they really feel comfortable with PHD applicants. The degree says you are an expert, and thats what they want.

However my point was that coding jobs are just one sliver of the possibilities when you have a phd in cs. Other doors are open like the financial industry, not to mention various research positions and academics. You are much less restricted because a lot of areas just want to hire people they think are 'smart' and a phd in something like CS goes a long way there.

You don't have to take such a job filled with "mundane point and click". Certainly, there are lots of interesting jobs out there, which are not incompatible with the sort of things you do in academic research. The point is you can do interesting things in industry with a computer science degree, which involve elements of the sort of things which go in academic research.

Speaking as someone doing a Computer Science PhD having done similar sorts of things in industry, I can say this with a reasonable amount of confidence

Industry has not got a monopoly when it comes to tedious activity! As a research student, I get to read lots of tedious and potentially irrelevant papers and texts, just in case that one paper has an important point which impacts an argument I am putting together.

An example would be using techniques such as grounded theory and hermeneutic circles as part of a structured review of literature. Most Computer Scientists haven't even heard of these concepts, but that doesn't make them any less relevant as research tools. The point is that Computer Science is a big area, which sometimes requires an interpretive as well as a positivist epistemological standpoint ; in other words, it's not just about maths and algorithms.

The degree actually means you have a broad understanding of the discipline and are the world's expert in one particular part of it. That particular part may or may not be relevant to what the company wants. Of course, a research degree is an education in its own right and this is of interest to some companies.

I think there is some truth in what you say, although I suspect that most of the doors that will open will be in academia rather than industry.

Well I guess it all depends on what one deems interesting. From my experience your view that industry can be intellectually rewarding is absurdly optimistic.

Indeed, I have never heard of these areas. I find them extremely fringe, within epsilon of not counting in fact. With the exception of some special cases CS is quantitative.

right. For example google wants to hire someone to work on their page rank algorithms. Pretty non trivial math going on there. There is a good chance person they will hire has a phd, because the chances of learning about the eigen values of graphs while working in industry is pretty much null. Same goes for statistical based algorithms--they want phds, optimization, etc..the list goes on and on. For advanced problem solving they arent just going to promote some in house code jockey.