[archero]

I'm genuinely curious, what is your expectation of candidates looking to get into ML at the entry level?

You seem to look down on those who have

1) learned from online courses

or

2) used AI on tasks that don't require it

Isn't this a bit contradictory? Or you expect candidates to have found a completely novel usecase for AI on their own?

I understand that most ML roles prefer a master's degree or PhD, but from my experience most of the master's degrees in ML being offered right now were spawned from all the "AI hype". That is to say, they may not include a lot of core ML courses and probably are not a significantly better signal of a candidate's qualifications than some of the good online courses out there.

So what does that leave, only those with a PhD? I think it's unreasonable that someone should need that many years of formal education to get an entry level position. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm really wondering, what do you expect from candidates? I think a few years of professional software engineering experience with some demonstrated interest in AI via online courses and personal projects should be enough.

[michaelt]

It sounds like Aurornis was not, in fact, trying to hire people at the entry level.

Most companies doing regular, non-ML development hire a mix of junior and experienced engineers, with the latter providing code reviews, mentorship and architectural advice alongside normal programming duties.

It's understandable that someone kicking off a new ML project would hope to get the experienced hires on board first.

But there are a lot more junior people on the market than senior people right now - as is the nature of a fast growing market.

[archero]

Ok, that makes sense.

I agree, it's problematic that there are so many more juniors than seniors in the industry right now. I feel like many juniors are being left without mentorship, and then it becomes much harder for them to grow and eventually become qualified for senior roles. So that could help explain why many candidates seem so weak, alongside with all the recent hype.

I guess eventually the market will cool off and the hype will die down since this stuff seems to be cyclical, and the junior engineers who are determined enough to stick it out and seek out mentorship will be able to grow and become seniors.

But it definitely seems like the number of seniors is a bottleneck for talent across the industry.