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Most R&D in this field is done in or around the automotive hubs. I.e. Detroit, Munich, Ingolstadt, Stuttgard, Wolfsburg, Tokyo, Tel Aviv etc. Silly Valley companies are getting almost all of the attention, but most of them are not doing anything that is more advanced than what the car manufacturers and big automotive electronics companies are doing. The few that are genuine tech leaders are either Waymo (good luck getting into that) or have very strong ties to a car manufacturer.

The typical path into this industry is to start at a big supplier ('tier 1' in automotive parlance) like Bosch, Continental, Valeo, Delphi etc. If you are half competent, you can get yourself poached by a car manufacturer after a couple of years. You can go the HN dream path and work for a tiny Silly Valley startup in the hopes of getting equity or getting acqui-hired down the line, but that will mean far less compensation and longer hours in exchange for a tiny chance of winning the startup lottery. Though TBH at this point the handful of winners are pretty much established and the almost 100 other startups in the AD field in the Bay Area are almost definitely not going to succeed.

By context, I'm assuming they meant autonomous vehicle.

Yes Autonomous Vehicle

And my other question? Any thoughts?

IF all the jobs in field X are in locations a,b,c and you can't move there then yes seems like it wouldn't be smart to study field X in order to get a job unless you see a future where locations with that job are going to change to somewhere you can go.

I guess that’s a personal choice?