This is almost too sad to dunk on. People running the world have never had a reflective conversation with a professional trained to help process emotions and healthily cope with the human condition. They're in charge of billions of dollars worth of resources and guiding society's investment into the future. Cooooool
They do have a PhD. May have given them some level of seniority or early boost compared to peers? A "8 years of relevant experience" type situation where 4 of them are the PhD. I don't know how seriously that's taken compared to direct experience and immediate work product in the industry, though.
Ah, the PhD would get you fast tracked to at least senior so that makes more sense. I'm grumpy about PhDs getting fast tracked though; in my experience academia is a shit show for programming standards and they tend to end up leading teams that are massive problem children. I'm in DevOps though so I'm heavily biased.
Nah, companies mostly just treat a PHD as an extra two years of work experience.