Faculty or industry applications without phd advisor's letter How is an application for an academic position seen if there is no reference letter from the graduate advisor? Are any of the potential issues for academic positions the same for industry positions? Do industry positions request letters of reference from phd advisors? I'm concerned I will not get a glowing letter from my phd advisor. Is a mediocre letter better than no letter?
As someone who has served on academic search committees, I would say that you certainly raise a red flag about your application if you don't have your Ph.D. advisor as one of your references.  Not having your advisor as a reference is not a deal-breaker, but it does raise questions.  

A couple thoughts for you:
1) Your advisor may have a much different (i.e., higher) opinion of you than you might expect.  They did choose to work with you, after all, and most advisors want their advisees to be successful.  Unless you've done something to cause your advisor to actively dislike you, I'd suggest reconsidering asking your advisor.  Even if the review isn't glowing, it could still be quite positive.  [For example -- I wasn't sure how positive a reference from my advisor would be, but it turned out that he was able to say positive things about my grad-school experience and training that I had neglected to highlight in my application.  His mentioning of those additional skills helped me get my first academic position.]

2) If your relationship with your Ph.D. advisor is especially strained, you may want to address your reasons for not including him/her in your reference list in your cover letter, CV, or some other document that you'd send in with your application.  As an application reviewer, I value honesty -- if you state why you didn't choose your advisor as a recommender from the get-go, it sets a tone that you're not trying to hide anything.  (We've all had tough colleagues and heard horror stories about advisors from friends, so we can understand.)  Be careful not to disparage your advisor too much if you go this route, though -- you never know who on the other end might know your advisor.

Good luck with your applications!