Recruiters emailing me about Machine Learning researcher positions. I’m waiting for the day another company tries to recruit me for management. Hopefully a MBA + my experience will change that. I don’t want to leave MS, but I do want to be pegged as management. It’s not a big deal, just a random musing. #SwitchingCareers
Do you want to be a data science manager or a product manager of AI products? Either way the MBA will help. But yeah, you’ll be emailed by recruiters about everything from ML to frontend web development positions, for the rest of your career. Sorry.
My long term goal is to have some sort of AI executive role, like manage the vision and direction of a product. I’m coming from being a ML researcher, so I’m still new to the business world. I’m hoping taking business courses, and ramping up in my new position will help me define that more.
Got it. It’s probably good to have product management experience even if you intend to go the people management route anyway. One note — if you want to become a manager of data scientists, you will need a PhD (do you already have one?). It may be a cultural thing or whatever, but they won’t take you seriously otherwise. Either career track (PM or DS Manager) will allow you to manage the vision and direction of a product. Just keep in mind the competition for PM jobs is much more fierce (since people from all backgrounds throw their hat in the ring and there are very few PM roles available), and the compensation for DS Managers is waaaaaay, way higher. I knew a DS manager (PhD) at VMWare who was making 600k back in 2016. Oh one more thing — see if your company will let you take Pragmatic Marketing courses. It’s kind of a scientific way of doing product management — I enjoyed them.
Management of what? People? Product roadmaps?
Great question, currently my role is managing AI products/features.
You doing MBA right now?
What made you switch from mle to pm?
Well, I want to go into AI management, so I’m currently PM’ing AI projects. I think ML is getting saturated, and I feel I already worked my dream job in the area, I think AI management will be the next “hot thing”.
1. Are you hiring? 2. What skills (from an interview perspective) are required to be an ML scientist at Microsoft?