I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I don't think this is at all true at the types of companies that would be hiring deep learning experts in any significant quantity.

Even outside of "hot" research topics, large companies and startups doing technically interesting things recruit heavily out of top PhD programs. Many companies even have different hiring processes for Ph.D. candidates, even for job positions that don't require or recommend a Ph.D., which suggests those companies evaluate Ph.D. candidates differently (and therefore view them as a different sort of asset).