Ask HN: What would you do in my situation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would you do in my situation?

5 pointsImTiredBoss6 comments

So I grew up in Belgium, did my MSc there and focused on math and machine learning. After I graduated I searched for a job in many western European countries, but was really disappointed with the offerings. I wanted a job that would give me some opportunities to hone my AI/ML skills, but here in Europe this sector is really undeveloped outside of academia. After lots of searching I bit the bullet and signed an academic contract. Pros: I get access to a relatively up to date cluster and I get to hone my skills in MLOps and MLEng and also the opportunity to do research and write papers. If I author enough I might even apply for a PhD. Cons: Very long hours, and subsistence level salary. Job location is also terrible.

Overall I am deeply unhappy with how my life is turning out. I am already 30 and I would like to be settled down soon, wife, kids and a stable career. But it feels like everything I do stands in the way of that. I had to move countries for this job and I really have come to despise my host country and in particular the location this job is situated at. It's no place for a young single man. The pay is also a complete insult.

I just don't know what to do. There aren't a lot of good opportunities in Europe and I don't quite have enough work experience to get hired by a US company, yet. In theory my job is giving me some great opportunity, but everything else about it is horrible. And the economy in Europe is really just shitting itself and will likely only deteriorate in the coming years, so I doubt the job market for my niche is going to improve.

How to make the best of my situation?

I'd seek mental health councillors because I strongly suspect you're carrying burdens which cloud your thinking. I felt like this, I sought help to look at my emotional state, and it improved things significantly.

Which economy are you in which pays subsistence wages to academics? Not having a phd limits your access to tenured roles of course, but your skills should command a premium.

Again, without knowing you or anything about you it is possible you interview badly, or do not present well on paper, which again demands professional help. This too has been a bugbear for me, I interview terribly. But I am now late stage end of career, content, and I put a lot of it down to some constructive introspection, CBT and the associated professional mental health.

Don't forget your physical health either: good sleep and exercise is vital.

Best wishes.

There is basically no western economy in which most academics don't earn subsistence wages, perhaps slightly more. You basically have to make associate professor before you can have a more comfortable lifestyle. Even at prestigious universities, unless you're white hot shit that all the institutions want, they exploit their reputation to pay far less than they can afford. Its leading to the situation where those with family wealth are overrepresented in academia because they can afford to start a career there.

A few thoughts.

1) Don't let your experience or lack there off keep you from applying to jobs. You have a hard to find skill set and recruiters don't often have a clue about how much experience is really needed. 2) Have you thought of doing remote contracting work for US companies, if you can pull this off you don't have to move or get a green card or visa? 3) Try getting on with one of the H1B visa consulting companies and see if they can get you something, this maybe very difficult but it is something that comes to mind.

Best of luck!

Take the job for now. Do you get exposure to the managing the cluster itself? Like at the hardware level or storage/job scheduler? Or are you a user and just processing the code to run? The HPC infra jobs are in demand in the US with the AI craze. I think PhD is a waste of time personally, just focus on practical experience.

> How to make the best of my situation?

Keep going with your shitty job, gain experience and keep trying. I don't know anything about options in your specific niche but in general with some experience it's usually easier to land a good job than directly after graduation, esp. during an economic downturn. Things might already look much better 1-2 years down the line.

Alternatively bite the other kind of bullet and be more flexible in what kind of job you apply to, with a bit of luck you might even like doing something else as much as what you do now.

> the economy in Europe is really just shitting itself and will likely only deteriorate in the coming years

I call bullshit, there is no reason why it can't recover.

tldr; get out of your niche (rut) and head to where the demand is.

I'm a battle scarred IT veteran with lots of practical experience as well as research and teaching experience in academia. Based on my experiences ...

The core of your problem is that you are insisting on doing work in "your niche" for which there is little demand in your marketplace. Cool jobs are badly paid. It is because there is lots of competition from people like yourself who want to do cool stuff.

What you desire in your life is perfectly reasonable. You just need to change tack and target a technical area with lots of demand and thus better pay and conditions. Academia, even if you gain a PhD is never going to be lucrative compared to business enterprises.

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