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Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

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Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#11
post #4

This is an anecdote with no data. And the entire global economy is in a recession, so the fact deep learning might have fewer job postings isn't particular notable. I'll note that in my personal anecdote, the megacorps remain interested in and hiring in ML as much as ever.

This agrees with what I see, but megacorps and in general many large organizations are often slow to move both in and out. They can take years to stop building up experience in areas that changed from being a new promising technology to mature fields to oversold fads. They also have a lot of money help weather many overpriced hires. So I am not sure that megacorps hiring is a very strong counter-argument. Just my 2c.

However, megacorps do not seem to suffer much for such continuous lagging in hiring. I do not know why this is so: is it that they still hire smart engineers who can easily change groups and fields or do they work on their core technology to help build the next peak (after the debris are washed away in a fad crash there is often a technology renaissance).

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#13
post #9

While this sounds plausible and has a lot of "prior" credibility coming from someone as central to deep learning as François Chollet, I'd love to see corroborating signal in actual job-posting data, from LinkedIn, Indeed, GlassDoor, etc. Backing up this kind of claim with data is especially important given the fact that the pandemic is disrupting all job sectors to varying degrees. As you can imagine, searching Googl…

Here are some data points from March. https://towardsdatascience.com/whats-happened-to-the-data-sc...

I actually found this, but decided not to post it because it only captures the first few weeks of post-crisis patterns, and doesn't contextualize any of the deep-learning-specific job losses against the broader job market, which as we all know was doing the same thing, directionally. It would be really cool to get an updated report of that level of detail from the author, who seems active on Twitter (https://twitter.com/neutronsneurons), but not Medium: that April job report is his latest article.

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#14
post #10

the fact that he doesn't allow people to answer his tweets making data-less claims like this is really a problem

He labels anyone who criticizes him as a troll. Unfortunately he is a public figure in the ML space and does have his share of trolls, but doesn't take too well to even well thought out replies.

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#15
Meh, only for people who bought into the hype without real use cases. Which I agree may be numerous.

In my company though, we've been applying DL with great success for a few years now, and there are at least five years of work remaining. And that's not spending any time doing research or anything fancy: just picking the low-hanging fruit.

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#16
post #4

This is an anecdote with no data. And the entire global economy is in a recession, so the fact deep learning might have fewer job postings isn't particular notable. I'll note that in my personal anecdote, the megacorps remain interested in and hiring in ML as much as ever.

He's now posted a follow-up analysis of LinkedIn Job postings: https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1300417952211034112?s=20

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#17

Meh, only for people who bought into the hype without real use cases. Which I agree may be numerous. In my company though, we've been applying DL with great success for a few years now, and there are at least five years of work remaining. And that's not spending any time doing research or anything fancy: just picking the low-hanging fruit.

Nice! Which company?

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#18
post #2

It's not exactly a great year for extrapolating trends about what people are doing with their time. I wonder how much of this is 2020-specific and not just due to the natural cycle of AI winters.

at least some is pure 2020. we want to hire, we can’t right now.

Why not? I would have thought it was a buyer’s market now with all the layoffs.

Re: Deep learning job postings have collapsed in the past six months

#19
Isn't it the same pattern every 10 years or so for "AI" related tech ? Some people hype tech X as being a game changer - tech X is way less amazing than advertised - investors bail out - tech X dies - rinse and repeat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

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