if you have a PHD in computer science, you have trained your whole life to do difficult maths on the cutting edge of whats possible with computers, and make algorithms sing with beautiful efficiency (and also write papers and talk on a stage about how cool and good your thing is (and by extension how cool and good you are).
Now you're being asked to move buttons around a page and debating how rounded the corners should be and endlessly discussing about what kind of filters you should support and the app spends 3 seconds on startup loading 500mb of js libraries.
You can understand the mismatch - even though the latter of these two is how you make a product better! a company of 200 people making bold, sweeping changes results in a mess. a company of 200 people grinding away the finest of small changes results in a product
I’ve got a PhD. I suspect the problem might be people blow too much smoke up these people.
There are many jobs though, why this one?
I don’t know, even with just an undergraduate degree I’m sure there are jobs that are spreadsheet manipulation. You could make the same case there?