After reading most of the comments I can try to provide a different perspective. I am a Director of Data Science and Software Engineering for a mid sized firm (~1000 employees and $150-200MM revenue). I started with a Finance degree then shifted into an analysis position at a FAANG (lots of excel, SQL, learning how to query big data). This eventually led to learning more about tech (python, AWS cloud stack, messaging…
Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
31–40 of 142 posts
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#32I can’t reccomend Kaggle enough for those who are looking to prove their abilities in the field.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#33I am also an EE and have been able to apply ML to my field, wireless comms. It turns out people skilled in the intersection of two fields are very rare indeed. I'd suggest you look for an opportunity to apply ML/CV/AI in your industry (deep learning for PCB inspection maybe?). Show the possibilities, get some research funding, do a pilot program or similar. Lead and drag your company (kicking and screaming if need be…
Also, you may not realize but we’ve been using ML techniques for decades in communications. Gradient descent is used to optimize equalizers; maximum likelihood estimation(and equalizer optimization) used for phase estimation in high order QAM. Plenty of other examples. So you probably are already familiar with much of the basic tool kit. I had a wannabe startup founder in ML tell me that there’s no way I could possibly understand the stuff if I didn’t have PhD in that area in CS (I am physics). I just smiled and nodded.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#34After reading most of the comments I can try to provide a different perspective. I am a Director of Data Science and Software Engineering for a mid sized firm (~1000 employees and $150-200MM revenue). I started with a Finance degree then shifted into an analysis position at a FAANG (lots of excel, SQL, learning how to query big data). This eventually led to learning more about tech (python, AWS cloud stack, messaging…
We gotta stop saying 'FAANG' when MSFT is the arguably the top tech company around these days.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#35This is a very tough track but uf you have software development experience it should be easier to get a role in ML or Data Science.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#36Industrial engineer by training here, I honed my chops on Kaggle competitions, eventually winning one. I was recently brought into a FAANG in a ML/AI engineering capacity. I can’t reccomend Kaggle enough for those who are looking to prove their abilities in the field.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#37Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#38This conversation might help https://twitter.com/suzatweet/status/1078446189593321472
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#39Maybe someone who actually works at FAANG can weigh in, but I would think that one of your best bets would be getting into one as a general SWE and then transitioning to AI/ML internally after a year. I recall Google even having some sort of internal program that encouraged this. Getting into Google is a moonshot, but it's possible to do so with no prior professional programming experience if you put in a ton of effo…
Random side note, but when is the 'FAANG' acronym going to die? MSFT is killing it, prob the top tech company around these days. Needs to be included in that list.
Re: Ask HN: Engineers from non-CS background, how did you pivot into ML/AI?
#40After reading most of the comments I can try to provide a different perspective. I am a Director of Data Science and Software Engineering for a mid sized firm (~1000 employees and $150-200MM revenue). I started with a Finance degree then shifted into an analysis position at a FAANG (lots of excel, SQL, learning how to query big data). This eventually led to learning more about tech (python, AWS cloud stack, messaging…
A lot of companies that say “data scientist” when they really mean “spreadsheet analyst” are places to avoid if you have career aspirations in ML. In the worst cases it can be a bait and switch (very common) to get overqualified people to babysit rudimentary analytics. Especially avoid places that might do this to pad their staff for any type of acqui-hire or investor signalling reasons, because your career goals will not be acknowledged.
In the best cases, it can be some befuddled IT manager who vaguely thinks they need “AI” but really they don’t have projects that would actually benefit from it. They might be sympathetic to your dissatisfaction in the reality of the job, but will have little power to do anything about it.
Somewhere inbetween is another very frustrating case: situations where the business or product clearly can materially benefit from “real” machine learning, and from the perspective of making customers happy & making money it’s a no brainer to invest time to research implementations, but risk averse management, often with no ability to gain an understanding of the benefits of investing in machine learning, or who want to act as credit / politics gate-keepers for an existing system, puts the brakes on it and retasks you on things that just waste your talent.