I think this is more of an indictment of how little real investment goes into R&D at private industry - even as the companies merge into megopolies who should have the finances to best justify it, they seem to become even less inclined to invest in fundamental research.
That doesn't imply that all those people needed a PhD for their job, though. I worked with multiple people at Amazon who had PhDs who were doing the exact same job I was.
Google is exceptional, and also in area of "growth capture". How about large companies in more mature industries? For example, do any of the telecom companies maintain the equivalent of Bell Labs today?
Google is infamous for valuing academic achievement over practical skills in interviews, 8% is actually much lower than what previously reported - I guess they lowered their standards of late.
If google is at 8%, everyone else of comparable size will probably be around 3% at best.
