rainbowglitter

"Industry experience is not as relevant as the above criteria, unless you work in a R&D dept." What if I work at a group where everyone (except for me) has a PhD, but they work on products and don't currently publish papers. Ideally, I would be able to spend the time doing research and publishing, but that doesn't appear to be an option at this point.

I have graduated from undergrad and plan to apply for PhD programs (and fellowships etc.) next fall. Would a software engineering job at a top firm (think Google / Amazon / Microsoft / Facebook) carry any weight in PhD admissions? The work would likely be related to my area, but it would not involve publications and the majority of the employees would not have PhDs. Another option I have is working at a group where all of the employees have PhDs in my area of computer science (and some have previous postdocs) but do not actively publish (they work on applications / products for the firm). Would their recommendations carry substantial weight for graduate admissions, even if I don't publish with them? I think that I'm a reasonably strong applicant either way, but it would be nice to have a job that will improve my strength as an applicant.