Why discourage people from entering music tech R&D? I’ve worked in this space for 7 years and we’re constantly on the lookout for talent! DAW programming is just one option for people wanting to develop musical applications, e.g. game industry (procedural audio, adaptive synthesis, etc), generative/adaptive music services (generative composition/arrangement for media or context dependent listening), mobile app development (on device synthesis, voice processing, etc). Furthermore, thanks to online learning resources (e.g. this author, JUCE ADC, etc) and online communities (e.g. KVR), it’s never been easier to learn how to build music DSP applications. However, we’re increasingly looking for people who have a strong background in both musical DSP and ML, so if you want to pursue a career in this space I suggest brushing up on traditional DSP and modern DSP/ML combined approaches (e.g. DDSP https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp, QMUL research topics http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/audioengineering.html)