Good coding/sys architecture skills No real world ML experience Good ML fundamentals through MOOCs, stanford online Ml courses, good knowledge of basic math (stats, linear algebra) used in ML Any good companies (like Goog, Amzn, Linkedin, Msft) where you can get L5 level on a ML focussed team with this background? Too hard to find a team since I got to E6 last half. but seeing TC stagnation and think ML is the way to max TC in next five years inspite of initial drop a level.
Why not try internal transfer? I am pretty sure not every ML team at FB is doing ground breaking ML research. Last I know most of the ranking stuff is GBDT/ Logistic Regressor and most work on feature engineering and running various parameters. I am pretty sure you should be fine as long as you are ready to put in effort into learning what you do not know.
But I assume the expectations at E6 is pretty high. I guess I can always ask around and see what I find.
FB has a lot more options in terms of where on the math-to-code spectrum you want to work. Find a team that works with ML but also builds a product around it. You can leverage your SWE skills and high level understanding of ML and continue learning and getting a deeper understanding of the ML work.
May be you should mention that by L5 you mean Senior SWE. Amazon L5 is SDE2 and Microsoft uses their weird system.
Edited!
What's your TC as E6 at FB ? You can try to join some ML focused startup, build credibility over a couple of years and then try to get back in to FB or elsewhere as ML engineer
~550k average over next 4 years assume I get MA. Yeh, thought about startup but will be a big pay diff. Plus high chance of getting laid off considering my lack of real world ML experience
Did you get DE to increase the Tc so fast after promo
Do you have a background in any of the ML application areas? One way to get in a ML focused role might be to work on applying ML to specific problems in say NLP or CV
Coursera ML is BS. If you’re fine with a downlevel, why not switch to a ML job at fb at a different team?
FB does not let you down level