Usefulness of prior industry experience before entering grad school? I'm wondering what impact does prior industry experience (by which I mean 2+ years in a non-trivial functional role in any established organization) lend to the profile of someone who is entering grad school for a Ph.D. (in my case, its Computer Science, but I expect the question to be applicable to other areas as well) ? 


Do admission committees look upon it as a bonus point, seeing that the applicant has managed real-world responsibilities successfully in the past, thereby improving the chances of acquiring funding (in terms of TA/RA) ?
More importantly, does it help the candidate during (and post Ph.D), when he is looking for research internships/post-docs ? 


In both cases, assuming the position the applicant held is in a completely different area from his/her research, what other factors become important in the both the above cases? Is it the difficulty of projects the candidate undertook (which, frankly, very few people outside the organization are equipped to judge), or the level of success (promotions, accolades acquired during the stint in industry) that matter, or are there other parameters as well ?

Also, in case it is deemed that such a profile offer limited/no advantage to the grad student, it would be nice to know why that may be the case - after all, most (if not all!) organizations are run for profit, and they would tend to have very little use for someone who is not productive or capable of learning.
I sit on graduate admissions committees (in computer science, in the US), and I spent 4 years in industry before going to grad school.  I agree with others: Industry experience per se is not particularly attractive, unless it's directly related to your proposed area of study.  (Industry experience may be more attractive in more applied areas of CS; I'm a theoretician.)

But it depends on what you do while you're in industry.  Admissions committees are looking primarily for strong evidence of research potential — raw "wattage", intellectual maturity, independence, initiative, creativity, attention to detail, eagerness to fight with hard problems, and most importantly, real results.  Recommendation letters that specifically address those qualities, whether from academia or from industry, will increase your chances of admission.  If you just sit in your cubicle and competently produce the code that your manager asks for, not so much.

My industry experience was a point in my favor during my academic job hunt, but only a minor one.