I've got to agree with you. I have a PhD from an British university, and recently moved back to the US. I haven't scored an industry job yet, rather I'm working as a postdoc in SoCal. But anyway, I've been trying very hard to engage with industry by attending programming meetups and demonstrating my skills to people who could be involved in hiring. Most of what I've talked to people about has gone over well. Sure it is a different path to go from a PhD to industry than to go in from undergraduate, but you will have developed thinking skills during it that will be valuable to any company. As far as showing that you are up to snuff on "best practices", a good set of github projects will go a long way if you have developed the right connections.

I have met a lot of PhDs in computational fields with mediocre coding skills, but if you are in the position of being up with the times it's just a matter of marketing yourself properly. Not easy, but as I like to say, if you can code well your not in danger of starving anytime soon in this day and age.