A PhD is a pretty deep dive into a subject, if you don't have passion you're gonna burn out. Of course other things are important, but if you don't have passion for the subject you're gonna be miserable.
And I don't really see it as jumping through hoops. A good PhD program has a few checkpoints to pass, but everything else is up to you. I strongly disagree that you don't get good people, at least not the ones who finish. People who don't know what they are getting in to or are only good at "gaming the system" tend to wash out pretty quickly, usually because they are miserable and burn out. It varies from industry to industry, though... maybe other engineering fields are worse than the ones I'm familiar with.
A lot of people make the mistake that you have to have a PhD to prove you're "smart", which is wrong. But that doesn't mean that only people with nothing better to do get one.
And I don't really see it as jumping through hoops. A good PhD program has a few checkpoints to pass, but everything else is up to you. I strongly disagree that you don't get good people, at least not the ones who finish. People who don't know what they are getting in to or are only good at "gaming the system" tend to wash out pretty quickly, usually because they are miserable and burn out. It varies from industry to industry, though... maybe other engineering fields are worse than the ones I'm familiar with.
A lot of people make the mistake that you have to have a PhD to prove you're "smart", which is wrong. But that doesn't mean that only people with nothing better to do get one.