I was talking about research scientists here (though my sense is 5 years of being a research engineer is still comparably good for gaining research skills, and probably somewhat better, than most PhDs). I also had a vague sense that at Deepmind being a research engineer was particularly bad for gaining research skills (compared to the same role at OpenAI or Anthropic).
I don’t think Deepmind has ever required a PhD for research engineers, just for research scientists.
In practice these roles are pretty different at deepmind from my cached understanding. (At least on many deepmind teams?)
I was talking about research scientists here (though my sense is 5 years of being a research engineer is still comparably good for gaining research skills, and probably somewhat better, than most PhDs). I also had a vague sense that at Deepmind being a research engineer was particularly bad for gaining research skills (compared to the same role at OpenAI or Anthropic).
(Yep, wasn’t trying to disagree with you, just clarifying.)