WLB in DeepMind?
I'm getting interviewed for a position of a Research Engineer in DeepMind coming from an IC4 Software Engineer in Facebook London. While this is a bump in the correct direction for my career, I'm worried about work/life balance in DeepMind: right now I normally work less than 8 hours a day, have 20 days where I'm allowed to work in my home country, and the entire London office is pretty chill (and has way better food). What's work/life balance in DeepMind like? Is everyone an overarchieving tryhard working 12 hours a day 6 days a week, or do people normally work a reasonable amount of time? TC: £145k/y. YOE: 4–6 depending on how you could.
What’s the offer TC?
Take the opportunity
I probably will anyway because the more career-oriented past-me is lobbying very hard for this, but I developed such a comfy routine working from home for Facebook that it will be hard to put it behind me.
Did you land the DeepMind offer at last? If yes and you've started, how are you finding the work life balance so far .
I'm still interviewing. They are certainly taking their time between one interview and the next. If I land it I assume I'd start on November the earliest. Reply to this then and I'll tell you.
Any idea what the coding rounds look like? Typical leetcode hard/med?
Op did you end up joining deepmind? What’s the interview process like?
Nah, 3 months after applying I got rejected after the 10th interview 😔 I might post about the interview process one of these days. The important thing is that it changed in 2021 and it's overall fairer and less focused in memorisation.
That sucks, sorry OP. Can’t believe it took them 10 interviews to figure that out. What was the last interview about?
Op can you please let me know what were the rounds?
Mind sharing your creds? Do you have top tier ML papers?
I have a master's degree, 3 papers, and a master's thesis that's a rehash of those papers. You usually need a PhD and a top-tier ML paper to become a research scientist. I was allowed to be a research _engineer_ with about 5 real citations.
Are the 3 papers in NeurIPS, ICML, ICRL type of conferences?