So I am considering pursuing a PhD in robotics (or a related field) after spending a year in the industry. I want to make an informed decision about my career path and be reasonable about things. The thing is, frequently when presented with a potential reason for why graduate education is a bad idea, I seem to dismiss it thinking: "but engineering is different!.."
In particular, people saying that there is no point in going for a PhD, unless one wants to pursue a career in academia, seem to strike me as not relevant to the engineering disciplines. In the end there is plenty of technical R&D going on around, and even my medium-sized company employs their fair share of wise folk whose only job is to come up with ideas and research into them to see if anything interesting comes out.
Somehow, in my mind, engineering PhD's are applicable, employable, can quit it half-way to return back to industry with no harm to their CV, etc. etc. (not to mention there's always funding for them!).
I do acknowledge that there exist some pretty theoretical or not-applicable technical fields out there, but they don't really come into my calculation as my interests lay elsewhere.
Where is the flaw in my thinking? Where am I most likely to get burned with my expectations?