Difficulty of moving from SWE to MLE?

Credit Suisse / Eng
jdof926

Go to company page Credit Suisse Eng

jdof926
Dec 31, 2021 21 Comments

How difficult is it for someone with a MSCS to get a MLE role if didn’t do the degree in ML and have no professional ML experience? I have around 3 YoE as a SWE, in NYC, and this is assuming I taught myself (online courses, YouTube, projects, etc) the required info listed on job listings.

Thinking of the rating as a combo of actually being qualified for the role, getting an interview, getting through the interview, overall competition/crowdedness, etc

Side question not for the poll, is a PhD really needed for the cool stuff in ML?

40 PARTICIPANTS SELECT ONLY ONE ANSWER
VOTE VIEW RESULT

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 21 Comments
  • Apple
    appleFruit

    Go to company page Apple

    appleFruit
    What do you mean by cool stuff in ml? Either you are competent enough to do the job or not? Are you willing to go to heart surgery to a dr who learn surgery by watching YouTube videos?
    Dec 31, 2021 5
    • Apple
      appleFruit

      Go to company page Apple

      appleFruit
      Everyone confused mle with rs. Mle is same as swe. For years swe work in ads search etc. I am not sure why op and you are so much confused. You are not getting work in mle team that mean you are incompetent swe who are not trusted to do real coding
      Dec 31, 2021
    • New / Eng
      jJajjsl

      New Eng

      PRE
      IBM
      jJajjsl
      I am an MLE and I use data processing tools that, for instance, mobile software engineers don't i.e. Airflow, pandas, tensorflow, etc. You're right that MLE is SWE but MLE requires additional knowledge that not all SWE have.
      Dec 31, 2021
  • Intuit
    MEMESBRUH

    Go to company page Intuit

    MEMESBRUH
    Just go work on ML Infra/Ops teams. It’s just SWE work anyway.
    Dec 31, 2021 2
  • Google
    axhe2

    Go to company page Google

    axhe2
    Most people who end up in MLE end up disappointed and jaded, since the day to day tasks of MLEs are identical to that of SWEs. The people who are actually doing interesting things are usually classified as RS and usually have PhDs.
    Dec 31, 2021 8
    • Google
      axhe2

      Go to company page Google

      axhe2
      What I mean is that people without PhDs wanting to do ML research will tend to be disappointed when they become MLEs. Companies take advantage of these people and have them working on things which they do not want to do, due to a difference in expectations. If you find these things interesting, good for you.
      Dec 31, 2021
    • Amazon
      HOKo21

      Go to company page Amazon

      HOKo21
      Are you a Research Scientist at Google?
      Would you like to DM me? Have few questions regarding interview rounds and prerequisites.
      Apr 15
  • Google
    wUyR14

    Go to company page Google

    wUyR14
    No, you can go MLE/DS without PhD, PhD is only needed for RS.
    Dec 31, 2021 0
  • New
    confuzd

    New

    confuzd
    It's doable. You can probably transition gradually, if your team has ML work. Just start asking your manager, if they can give you some ML related projects. Small at first, and bigger later.

    I'm MLE at a startup. In general, I like it, but I got tired of the way ML is organized in my current company (we're in "magic" AutoML space). So I find, I'm much happier, when I don't need to tweak models for the customers again and again, but to work on implementation/engineering tasks.

    I imagine though, that working a bigger company, in which ML is serving themselves, has it's own established pipelines and working ML models would be very different. I started considering switching my jobs for that.
    Dec 31, 2021 0