In support of your argument, I would be surprised if the key engineers in large companies (ex: Jeff Dean, Peter Norvig, Yann LeCun, Andrew Ng, ...) aren't earni

In support of your argument, I would be surprised if the key engineers in large companies (ex: Jeff Dean, Peter Norvig, Yann LeCun, Andrew Ng, ...) aren't earning 7 figure annual incomes, especially after stock incentives are taken into consideration. They all work for someone else.