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Comment by sharps_xp | Hacker News Reader

Are ML/AI certificate holders competing for the same jobs as ML/AI PhD graduates? I have a list of follow up questions to this but it seems like there's a lot of hype for ML/AI/DeepLearning but no definitive way to track this new job market. These online programs, although more accessible, are doing the same thing as their physical campus counter part and not being transparent about what to expect after finishing their programs.

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ML/AI is very new field. I heard someone say "AI is like teenage sex. Everyone is talking about it but no one is sure how to do it"

So for jobs, ML/AI is pretty much an even field unless there are niche research jobs which only requires Phd gradudates

According to another HN thread this is actually not true. Only having a certificate, without CS/AI undergrad, makes it almost impossible to get a job. You need Masters at least for most positions, some engineering positions you can get in with Undergrad in CS and taking the right AI courses.

Do people in the tech industry find any more value in physics/math undergrads than CS? CS is not as rigorous. I always thought that physics/math undergrad + ML certificate might be just as competitive as a masters in ML coming from a non-relevant BS

I'm going to have to disagree.

Physics/Math is useful but your particular field/speciality in CS is relevant as well. I would bet a bit more money on a CS grad to understand convexity, comp geometry and optimization than a physics grad, and math majors don't always have the code skills to develop things for production.

Point of argument here being frequently neither do CS Phds and at tech companies you pair Math/CS Phds with 'production' engineers.

Also certificates aren't really rigorous necessarily and also are quite easy to one-off versus relevant programs/theses/research experience.

production is an overloaded term depending where you go

It's quoted on the neural-redis README[1] and attributed to Mike Townsend[2].

[1]https://github.com/antirez/neural-redis

[2]https://twitter.com/Mikettownsend/status/780453119238955008

And before that it was being used for big data.

http://techcitynews.com/2014/08/07/big-data-is-a-lot-like-te...

Admittedly it's been a few years since I considered getting into this field but the last time I checked there weren't that many positions available and most of them required graduate degrees from good schools. Seems that even companies with a significant ML emphasis employ a lot fewer ML specialists than nuts & bolts coders.

The certificate holders may be competing for the same jobs, though I really doubt they'd get one over PhD candidates unless there was something they had done substantially at least as interesting as an ML/AI PhD holder, or I guess if the company absolutely can't find anyone with higher qualifications.

And I think what I perceive as your doubts as to landing a job with one of these are probably founded. This is a way for the university to make a bunch of cash. As long as that happens, whether students get a related job or not is not important to the university except to help with marketing to prospects.

What will the AI expert job market be like in two years? Expectations seem to be running high, people see promising trends, but no one can see the future. At least, not yet, I think. Maybe there's a new paper.

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