[D] Are people in ML Phds still happy?

As an outsider who has many friends in ML Phds, this is my perspective of their lives:

1. long hours, working nights, weekends
2. no work-life balance, constant fear of being scooped and time pressure from deadlines
3. frustrating broken review systems
4. many incremental, advertisement papers that produce very little actual contribution (which is justified by 2.)
5. "engineering" and not "science"
6. all this pressure amounts to severe imposter syndrome

Are people in the field still happy? Where …

advertisement balance fear incremental life machinelearning people perspective review systems work work-life balance