Aspen University: online Doctorate in Computer Science

[ss20ts]

I'm not sure what your point is. You need to remember that employment is a competition. With all of the companies you have listed, you will be competing with people from around the world - literally. Who's going to land a research position at Google? A graduate from Aspen University or Harvard University or Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute?

I have an aversion to threads full of people who don't work as CS research engineers, giving opinions about what's good for being a CS research engineer.

Coincidentally, that's exactly what my post said:

Remember, just like applying to competitive academic programs, applying to competitive companies requires quite a bit more finesse than just meeting the minimum requirements. 

After finding a team that you'd like to work for, you should figure out the kind of qualifications that people who were hired came in with. Check LinkedIn profiles, read Blind, look at CS career subreddits, etc.

From a brief look, here's some finds:

• Nobody has a hard requirement for NA/RA PhDs, but that's largely irrelevant because...
  
• The standard rules for: top school / top program / top impact still apply. Every position here requires deep, provable expertise, through some combination of graduate credentials, work experience, or published research.
  
• Expectations for academic credentials vary by discipline and by company. Working on problems in hard engineering, robotics, or AI/ML? Expect to have a RA PhD with published research. Working in analytics or UX? A masters or even bachelor's is fine, but you'll need a very strong stats background, ideally with published work.
  
• A common sight at big N research is plenty of PhD dropouts and ABDs. It seems like most folks get deep enough to learn their field, and then go into industry to make bank.
  

Will this convince the OP that getting a NA PhD is a good idea? I don't know. But if you're going to plan around the state of the industry, you should do some research on what the industry's like.

Employment ads never say RA or NA. Where your degree is from is HUGE in research. My husband has worked in IT for decades so I do have some clue about what I'm talking about.