Ask HN: Would I be stupid to give up a big tech job?

IMHO, if you are 26 and have a cushy job and are not actively doing something in your spare time you don't really want to do whatever that is. If ML/AI were this burning passion you'd find 5-10 hours a week to work on it.

Obviously projecting a lot based on two paragraphs here but seems like you're suffering from ennui and are casting about for something to fill the void. Day dreaming about school or a different type of company or technology is just that. Dreams which probably do not reflect reality. Keep the cushy gig and start looking for purpose in a hobby, charity work, family, travel, whatever. If you hit on something that will pay you enough to live then great, do it. Otherwise, keep the cushy gig, do it in your spare time, and save money until all your time is spare.

Yup, 100% this. I think the big wave of ennui we have been seeing in the past couple of decades comes from a fact that much less people are starting families. Once you have children, it’s clear that the job is just means to an end. This can actually increase job satisfaction, as people no longer depend on jobs for fulfillment.

About 10 years ago I quit a software architect job to start a startup (it failed). Not FAANG, but safe and well-renumerated for my area. If I could go back in time, I'd quit again without thinking. It was a rut.

However, this isn't universal advice. There are people who don't want/like risk. They want a safe and steady job that gives them status, preferably without too much stress and a good salary. In exchange they agree to play corporate office games and doing less exciting work. And that's ok.

The key is (a) figuring out what you want and what kind of person you are, (b) accepting that life is a probabilistic endeavor and you can't take risk out of it. Why do you want to go into ML? Are you hacking something in your spare time? Is it because it seems cool and trendy? Can you go into an ML role at your current workplace?

You are in a unique position in the history of time where you make A LOT of money for a regular job. My approach would be to look at it as an exit strategy. Work in FAANG until mid-thirties, save as much money as possible. By then, you could be financially free and do whatever you like, start a company, study, or change fields.

By then, you also maybe have a family who will change how you look at the world completely. Also, you would have a good CV which will give you a job anytime you need one.

Yes, it is a safe route, but also one that leads to freedom, which is very powerful.

I think ML/AI will just blow past us. It's sort of like trying to be a computer engineer 30 years ago, or telecommunications engineer 20 years ago. If you're not there, you're too late.

There's still the application layer. Be an expert in a field and build something on top of the foundations that others set down.

I think big tech is a regretful place to be though. It depends entirely on what you would regret. Some regret not having kids. Some regret not doing more. Some regret doing too much and missing out on life.

I think some people just have a pioneering spirit that most won't understand. It really doesn't matter for humanity whether you invent the first smartphone or electric car or land on Mars. Someone else will do it. Often they do it months later, sometimes decades in the case of expensive things like space travel. You probably change the world more as a big tech engineer than a CEO of a multi-million dollar company.

Money is everywhere. It's easier to optimize for what you want to do that pays well, rather than what pays the most. Because what pays most often lands you with high living costs. Wealth attracts rats too.

Learn ML in your spare time, there are likely internal resources you can access to learn. Then apply for a job transfer within the company into a ML role. It's not easy to get where you are, take advantage of it.

I switched to ML .. well .. Deep Learning in a big way in 2018. Switched from Cloud backend engineering/research(which I had been doing since its early days). I gotta say ..not the smartest move in hindsight. Peers doing cloud are now in very high positions as corps grew rapidly in that area and needed technical leadership. DL is very math intensive and it took me a while to get my sea legs. I finally feel pretty comfortable in my (technical) neck of the woods, and realize it is all going to get blown away soon by newer advances (LLMs, stable diffusion, NERFs).

I don't think my career is anywhere close to a rocket ship at the moment .. there is a chance that ML/DL gets a lot bigger in the next 2-3 years (e.g. Satya Nadella's recent talk circuits, that is the timeline he predicts). What this means for me is that I need to get exceptionally lucky to get on to the next rocket ship. I have no clue who that is, despite having a CV for it.

Not discouraging you but just sharing my journey. If anyone has any suggestions for what the rocket ship, please enlighten me.

ML or ML research is something that will be done by fewer people in ML in the future. Even if the absolute numbers increase the large majority of people will be simple users.

See ChatGPT, CoPilot and co. Only very few people actually worked on those systems and even less were actually ML researchers. For me, it sounds like you have a strong case of FOMO.

Back to your actual question. Hard to give advice without more information. Is there any chance for further career development in your current position? Any way to branch out into something adjacent? Focus more on backend or frontend?

> I will definitely regret not getting into ML & AI if it really picks up in the future, but I will regret leaving FAANG even more if the ML revolution doesn't materialize / if I fail.

1. Do ML at a FAANG.

2. Figure out if you want to do research or enginerring because there's a big difference between the two.

3. Be more clear about "ML picks up" means to you. It's quite popular now - I don't know what you expect to change, and if something changes, I don't know why that's necessarily good for your career.

Forgot to mention - I have an ML job and would really like a dev job at FAANG, happy to swap with you any day.

I left FAANG about six years ago. First startup I joined was circling the drain before I even joined. CEO called a pivot. Half the company quit. Almost went back to my old job (HR said I could come back without an interview anytime in the first year and they’d been planning to double the size of the team I was leading) Didn’t. Figured I’m there to learn and failure is a good teacher.

Stressful but worth it.

Go live your life. It’s the only one you’ll get.

Here's my general opinion. This is advice I gave to my children as well.

You're young. You're at the age where taking risks and maybe eating a little dirt as a result is a thing you can tolerate -- or at least tolerate a lot more than later in life. Take the risks now, when the worst-case results are things you can recover from relatively easily.

Maybe you could try taking some ML classes on the side, to see if you enjoy it/if you're good at it. I heard some FAANG actually sponsor employees to do Masters in Computer Science.

Continue to ride the FAANG/MAMAA gravy train, if you have an itch build a side project. You will not be able to replicate that kind of income. Large startup exits are a rarity, < 1% perhaps.