Your experience of it being hard to even get started because of the insular hardware community mirrors mine. (Well, I guess my employer does use FPGAs somewhere

Your experience of it being hard to even get started because of the insular hardware community mirrors mine. (Well, I guess my employer does use FPGAs somewhere, but in a department far from me.) Are you just using a Cyclone V demo board? To be honest, it's actually a little hard to even find FPGA accelerators that aren't bespoke.