the only things to look for when hiring AI/ML people is - do they have a good sense of how to evaluate if something (model/system) works. can they go really deep into setting up evals, data, cohorts, etc. - do they set up a high throughput experimentation harness - do they keep up with research news people think that good research is about getting good ideas, but ideas are really cheap and a good system for experimentation and actually, truly evaluating if your ideas are good or bad will already put you in the 90th percentile