How I went from dead-end financial consulting and no technical skills to machine learning engineering in 5 years, and then to AI research 3 years later.
My guiding principle was to maximize my usefulness - I never planned farther than 6 months ahead. If I'd seen this roadmap in 2012 I probably would've given up immediately and started that pub crawl business.
Tip: try zooming out until the columns line up.
Time
2011 Q2
2011 Q3 - 2012 Q4
2013 Q1
2013 Q2 - 2013 Q4
2013 Q4
2014 - 2015 H1
2015 H2
2015 Q4 - 2017 Q4
2016 Q1
2016 Q2 - 2019 H1 (3 years)
2016 H2
2017 H1 - 2019 H1 (2 years)
2017 Q4
2017 Q4 - 2020 Q4
2019 H2 - 2020 H1
2020 Q1
2020 Q4-2021 Q2
Status
Graduated with econ degree, 3.1 GPA
Job 1: financial consulting
Web Development curriculum (step 1)
Dev Bootcamp
Job 2: Web development
Stagnation
Dipping my toes in CS
Job 3: Fullstack Engineer
CS Curriculum (step 2)
Dipping my toes in ML
ML Curriculum (step 3)
ML sabbatical
Job 4: ML Engineer
CS294 Deep Unsupervised Learning
Job 5: ML Researcher
Emotions
Aghast
Misery
Elation
Obsession
Relief
Frustration
Revelation
Frustration
Epiphany
Curiousity
Frustration
Imposter
Overconfident
Challenged
Amazed
Do differently
Things don't just "work out"
Everything
Find mentors
Everything
Ignore unhelpful degrees
Project sequencing
Sabbatical sooner
Narrow scope
Better curriculum
Ask for help
Focus on other bottlenecks
Nothing!
I loved my job as an AI researcher. Research is simply learning the answers to questions that nobody has asked before, so the learning skills I’ve accumulated served me well. But I had no choice but to quit: the Archive had broken up during the pandemic, and I couldn’t stop thinking about starting a community that would last for 50 years instead of 5.
I usually encourage people to start programming if they love to build and could imagine themselves being a programmer for 5+ years.
I generally recommend the Bloom Institute of Technology, because it’s one of the longest bootcamps and because it briefly covers computer science fundamentals. Be advised: you get out of it what you put into it, so prepare yourself like it’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.
There are many folks with business skills that want to “learn how to talk to engineers”, learn how to build their own MVPs, or otherwise don’t plan to be a full-time programmer for the bulk of their career. I usually discourage these folks from going to a bootcamp or taking intro to programming courses. Instead, I’d bet on the no-code movement. Here’s a curriculum I prepared for a friend: