Working research for a big tech means you are much less subject to the “publish or perish” req of a university. It often isn’t a must have resume point, but it actually gives you a different kind of freedom.
But obviously chose Google.
Unfortunately, the Fellowship only lasts for two years. Towards the end, it was actually super stressful. How could I support myself while continuing to work on what I thought was important? And if I wanted to live in the Bay Area, how could I event get immigration status to work and live there?
Getting to work at Google Brain at this point let me continue to do what I was doing before -- many of my blog posts, including the one being discussed here, were written while I was at Brain.