I’m d1 at series C, formerly uber-TL at Meta, 14 years in the industry, transitioned from SWE to MLE in 2016, helped many others, hired both at big tech and startup Seen many questions lately “help me transition to MLE” but no specifics. Happy to speak to any particular issues and give you my 2c. Disclaimer: as a director I am triple booked in every time slot, I will get to all the questions but it may take a bit of time. Thanks for understanding
for backend distributed swe what should i study, is it advised to switch teams in company?
What to study depends on why you want to switch. If you want to do modeling, go get a PhD in that specific area, if you want to be on productization side understand standard tooling Generally (this is true for every job family switch in my experience) it is best to switch within a company whenever possible. Onboarding on a new job family and a new company at the same time is really hard
Can I switch from SRE/DevOps to an MLE?
Yes. Easiest to go to ML Ops and then if you don’t like that into more traditional mle
Tips on doing this internally at Meta?
Meta is pretty hard because you are expected to be a specialist basically in all roles. E4 can do it more easily than e6, at e6 your career trajectory is pretty set. Are any teams you are collaborating with MLE? Any of your projects already tending toward that world? In all honesty I’ve never seen this done successfully, everyone who tried had to go outside. Which sucks
any idea if the same applies for G?
My title is mle, but I would like to be a research engineer. I see many people with no publishing experience having that title...and here I am after being accepted at a top conference during my masters, writing different data loaders .
Do you have a PhD? With the publication record seems like you are undervalued. Have you brought this up with your manager? What do they say?
Plz Share the high level roadmap , someone who doesn’t know ABC of Ml , but decent background on math and programming how to get started and how to approach ml roles in faang
This is a hard question because it depends on your motivation. Why do you want to be an MLE in Faang? What type of MLE? It is unlikely to go from non-Faang to Faang and swe to mle in one hop
How did you start this journey of transitioning to MLE? I'm considering doing an online master's in ML - is this advisable? Do you first switch to MLE internally and gain experience and then interview outside?
It depends on what you want to do. If you really want to come up with net-new models you need a PhD. I was the mle who productizes what researchers put out. For me I found a project that needed to be done at work and then took some courses. I learn much better that way and feel like most of us who are involved in hiring want some experience validated by your employer/client/oss maintainer. I find that “personal projects” typically get ignored
Since you have gone through the journey, would you suggest the same to other people as well?
Great question! Depends on your motivation. I can speak for myself: It was totally worth it. I caught a couple of big waves and was able to contribute to an industry that’s still pretty young. I got into programming through ML way back in high school, I always thought that ML techniques were really cool (big Asimov fan) and loved making them useful to real people.
I am a SWE at Google with MLE offer at Meta. Can I DM you?
Sure, if it needs to be private. Otherwise community benefits more from having a question here
is software engineering demand getting slower compared to mle? should every software engineer start learning and understand some amount of mle ?
There are more SWEs than MLEs. At this point mle jobs are maybe a bit easier but it won’t last super long. Definitely not a reason to switch careers It’s always good to broaden your horizons and I do think that knowing when to use ML techniques will make you a better SWE. I don’t think you’ll be unemployable without it but it is a great thing to understand
How about defense mle -> MAANG MLE? Any reccomendations?
Should be doable. Expect a downlevel. Are you having issues getting interviews or passing them?
Well I only have 5 yoe and I can't relocate. I'm in SC so basically only remote stuff.