From Software Engineering to AI Research or a Tale of 413 "No"

Cool post, love your writing style and your journey sounds intense. You're clearly very self-motivated.

> So here’s some privileged-not-so-actionable advice to everyone trying to break into the field — get a big name on your resume.

This is key advice and very actionable imo... mainly because I think it works even if that big name is only from an internship (as you discovered).