Before you project your anecdot as a massive generalization of all PHD programs, consider the fact that at least in computer science, there are VERY happy PHDs working at Google, Twitter, FB and others who are glad to have an expertise in fields like machine learning, NLP, IR and computer vision which otherwise would be difficult to attain. Many of these people in fact got hired at these companies because of their PHD degree. In fact, just about few years ago Google had reputation of sweeping clean pretty much all CS PhDs from top 50 schools IIRC. So getting PHD in fields like CS is definitely not a waste of time. Now sure you can end up with bad advisor but that's where you are supposed to do your homework ie background checks on professors and consult former students on their experience. The process of choosing advisor is very critical, you need to find your cultural fit and you need to have very strong intersection on research areas. If you don't have a lot of choice then you are likely underqualified and you would end up choosing something suboptimal that is destined to make you unhappy. Perhaps you were better off just looking for real job in that case instead of insisting on PHD degree. Either way I don't see why your experience with your advisor should be a reason to universally downgrade all PHD programs out there.