Usually it is not quite a gift, where I work you get some bonus, something like $1500 for each patent with your name on it.

Not to mention I can't hire lawyers, researchers, illustrators, and all the other things my company does for me. It would cost me so much more, both in dollars and time.

Yep! While yeah I am selling IP for some small bonus, it's way, way easier and a guaranteed return on my investment vs. creating a startup or trying to get someone to license a patent. I've done a few patents now at my current job, and it's literally about 4 hours of investment from me for each one to get the summary written up, talk to the lawyers, and then review their patent draft.

Also, the patent lawyers I worked with had so much domain experience (ML) that it was kinda scary.

Well it depends a lot on the patent, I guess. Some patents are definitely not worth a startup, so probably it's not a bad idea to get some bonus and be done with it.

However it's cool for big companies to show they have thousands of patents.

It's cool for individual contributors to say they have 30-40 patents too. We all get our thrills different ways.

Yeah, on that 'creating a startup' approach. Tried it, indeed much much harder.

Like most of us are going to go start a company, have it succeed, and let alone base it on 1 or 2 good ideas (when we have many more).