Completely agree, I would also add just a couple of tips I've found (not directly related to the question):

- have a good circle of friends in ML you chat to, you will sometimes find yourself in places where you are the only ML expert and you will need people you trust to bounce ideas across/tell you about new things you missed

- invest in a decent workstation and if you can't afford one try to get your first gig where it's not needed and buy one as soon as you can. This has saved me tons of time over the years

- get good at showing results quickly to stakeholders... and I mean you should be able to hack it in an hour at most. They are paying you a lot of money and want the feeling of progress. Something in slides/powerpoint is OK, a dumb streamlit/whatever app is even better. Impressing a stakeholder is the best way to get repeat work