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thedabking123 t1_jcvmwoq wrote

It happens in every career in every field; I'm 37 and have been a PM of an ai-driven product for a while now.

I am starting to care more about corporate leadership and using money earned to enjoy life than the technical bits I've been cycling around for a while on

Some ideas that may apply to you

  1. you could focus on people management and direct teams on larger projects
  2. you could try and find companies with new interesting problems to solve (MLOps for LLM models in firms like Jasper, or OpenAI, or Cohere, or perhaps HCI loops between humans and UI-embedded LLMs like at adept.ai ?)
  3. you could find a truly deep R&D job on a crazy new area and go at something novel. (i personally would love to spend 2-3 yrs exploring neurosymbolic computing or quantum computing once i get tired of corporate politics; haven't decided yet)
  4. etc.

No one job is a constant set of discovery and joy and focus. Everything gets old after a while so be prepared to refresh your career again in 3-5 yrs.

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Alternative_iggy t1_jcxrabk wrote

I guess I’m at year 10+ now. In the last few years I’ve switched back to academia/ research!

I started out in research where I was happy but made no money, switched to a startup where I made a little more money but often got bored of the problems, when a startup got bought by a bigger company found myself working on sometimes WAY cooler problems but had to deal with a lot of bureaucracy, moved up in management roles for a bit, and now hopped back to straight up research where I’m incredibly happy and have a lot more flexibility.

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eigenham t1_jcxrgio wrote

How did you make the switch back? Were you publishing while with the startup and/or bigger company?

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Alternative_iggy t1_jd1lr16 wrote

Yep! I reached out to get a volunteer appointment with a lab I liked and made sure I had it ok’d in my work contract. I also used the mandatory continuing education credits the company had to take some grad classes and stayed part time when I first hopped back.

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kau_mad t1_jd1ipkm wrote

I’m also finding myself back in research after the startup I was working at failed. Are you working at a university or an industrial research lab?

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Alternative_iggy t1_jd1n6zz wrote

University! Although I had a fellowship from a more industrial place for funding at first Finding funding is always the real tricky question!

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sardius02 t1_jcw5f1j wrote

I'm wondering what the basic ML assignment was, I'd love to get a better idea of what to expect from take-home assignments in the interview process.

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