OP is not ready for corporate environments if "VPN + ssh + 2FA" already "feels like too much" lol

I also wonder how they didn't come across X Forwarding at all? When i used a remote machine for my thesis that was one of the first things i set up, just so i could do small experiments on GPU and look at results more easily.

Basically every issue they seem to have is solved by using VSCode + Remote development (Transferring files, Customizing hotkeys, looking at outputs)

>And as for compute, I also realised that there are many small tasks that can actually be run on my machine

Yes, if you have a $3000 Computer, you can do many things that other people would need to use remote compute for. Depending on the "Cluster" they are talking about, the mac might even have better specs lol