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Back in 2012. There may be less of an effect on PhDs in 2020 because of the world-historic catastrophe that everyone is familiar with, and the resulting collapse of the job market.
Back in 2011, with a lively discussion in the comments, including contributions from David Wallace, Peter Ludlow, Colin Farrelly, Laurie Paul, Keith DeRose, and many others, and replies from Philip Kitcher.
ADDENDUM: A senior philosopher elsewhere writes: "My sense is things may have changed a bit since 2009: with the exception of community colleges, almost everybody wants pubs. Most students [at a top 30ish PhD program where this philosopher taught] compete for teaching jobs, and our sense there was things start to look good after 3 pubs. Quality of venue mattering much less at weaker places." I'm opening this for further comments on whether things have chnaged since 2009 and what people's experience is more recently.
(The first link in the 2011 post isn't working: it goes to this earlier post about the "code" in which letters of recommendation are too often written.)
I posed the question back in 2013, and thought I'd re-up the late John Gardner's interesting answer at that time (and invite reader thoughts/reactions):
I'd be the first to say that the world is a better place - constitutively - just in virtue of containing more good philosophy, and more good philosophers. But I take it that the questioner is asking about making the world a better place instrumentally by his or her work, owed to to the dissemination of good ideas in it. Beyond helping students and other scholars to solve puzzles or to frame arguments, I do not believe that my philosophical work has any significant consequences via such dissemination and I do not intend it to have any. I do not intend it to have any, partly because I suspect that any consequences it would have, if it had any, would be really bad. Not because it is bad philosophy (though maybe it is) but because philosophy (in my subfields: moral, political, legal) is ripe for abuse. It is better not to have any effects than to have predictably unwelcome effects through the kind of people who are likely to put my work to use. On the very rare occasions when I have seen my work used by judges, policymakers, journalists, etc. - what Andrew [in a comment above] callled 'intermediaries' - I have very much disapproved of what they did with it and wished that I had managed to keep it much more secret.
Back in 2011, and still applicable. Worth noting that Harvard, which used to fully fund all JD/PhDs, has stopped doing so. (LINK NOW FIXED TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE OLD POST.)
(I wouldn't bother revisiting this except people keep pointing out to me that Mr. Oseroff continues to lie on social media about what he actually did. It defeats the point of his apology for his misconduct for him to now lie about what transpired.)
Back in 2018: philosopher Adriel Trott (Wabash), who participated in the online harsassment of Rebecca Tuvel, complains about online harassment in philosophy!
Only last summer but it seems like another era. I wonder how many of the absurd miscreants are still at it?
UPDATE: A senior philosopher elsewhere writes: "I'm not plugged into social media, but I've also wondered whether this crisis has inspired philosophy's woke brigade to endeavors more serious than narcissistic moral preening. I rather doubt it."