I know someone who was doing a PhD on neural networks, and interned at Google during it (a research group involving NNs). He was told by that research team that they wouldn&#x27;t hire him without his completed phd. He cut his phd short to a masters and got a job at Google anyway, but unfortunately I can&#x27;t remember whether it was on that research team, or  a generic software-engineer position (either way, the internship was the foot in the door).<p>You can certainly do good independent work, and write and publish papers if you want. If you can prove your conpetence, why shouldn&#x27;t you be hired? At least, not every employer is going to have a major bias against those without PhDs.