Being one of those lucky few at Google Brain who switched into ML early enough to catch the wave... I fielded my fair share of questions from academic friends about how they could get one of those sweet gigs paying $$$ where they could do whatever they wanted. I wrote these two essays basically to answer this class of questions.
Why did Brain Exist? https://www.moderndescartes.com/essays/why_brain/ Who pays you? And why? https://www.moderndescartes.com/essays/who_pays_you/
Free lunch briefly existed for a small lucky few in 2017-2021, but today there is definitely no more free lunch.