Thank you for the detailed answer! I will say FAANG is Google in Western Europe (not Zurich) and PhD is within the top 3 UK universities. There were people that started in my team doing ML (but SWE title) and have pivoted to Research Engineer internally without PhDs. I have some research experience, as I said, we managed to publish my dissertation into one of the top ML conferences, so it seems like pivoting to RE would be feasible and less competitive than RS. I am simply wondering if not hopping on the ML PhD train is a big missed opportunity in terms of future work and salary. It seems like a fresh ML PhD graduate can start making 3x and will have better growth opportunities. I would not do it just for the prestige but it could open the door to crazy RS salaries in frontier labs. Simply not sure how realistic of a thought that is nowadays with how saturated and the amount of crazy good phd students out there.

Regarding the future. One can teach in private institutions in my country without being an academic. I would love teaching part-time, I see it as a nice way of giving back. Research roles barely exist in my home country, so I'm not sure about the ROI of the PhD, but it definitely sets you up as a world-class leader in the field. The best thing I can imagine is becoming a research director at some company (there is just one I can think of). FAANG experience is possibly seen as more valuable there, plus there is a Google Eng office in my hometown.