throwaway1183

In your opinion, which role is the best to be average at? From compensation, work/life balance, fulfillment, career opportunities, etc?

1. Frontend Engineer

2. Backend Engineer

3. Applied Research Engineer

4. Research Engineer

5. Graphics Engineer

6. Game developer

7. Enterprise SE

8. Fintech Engineer (esp. in trading/algos)

9. Cloud Engineer

10. DevOps

11. System Engineer (compiler, os, browser)

12. Consumer Application Engineer (macos/linux/windows)

13. Machine Learning Engineer

14. Data Engineer

It’s always good to be best. I got told best ML engineer would earn a lot compared to best Frontend Engineer. (ofc, it might be wrong). But which role is good to be average at?

It would also be awesome to know barrier of entry vs reward. For example entering graphics engineering is extremely hard and reward is also average compared to average frontend roles. Once the profile is built up, the former will be a great deal because the investment pays off!

So, what are your opinions? Any idea?

So as an average person, how can you establish rewarding online presence that can help with career and opportunities?

Inspiration for the post: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37622702 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37617322

With the recent development in AI, for example stable diffusion, my hobby as an artist has been almost non-existent. No matter how much time I spend on my art, I will not be able to compete with AI models. These things are not going to slow down. Often times, I feel like the process of using AI-generated art and augmenting it with my own projects is more productive than creating my own art from scratch.

Adding ChatGPT to the equation, the threat has doubled. It has just started, yet it can do remarkable things. This is like the AlexNet moment in the field of computer vision. There was a time before AlexNet. Now, most research and implementation involved using deep learning in one form or another. I have been in this field for a long time, but I don't have any substantial work to show for it. I feel like my effort wouldn't make a difference. As long as I am improving, these models are able to improve at a faster rate. Of course, I cannot compete with the top researchers at these big labs. So whatever I do will be insignificant.

I have been trying to change my field from AI to something else, but it feels like that would be a wrong decision. However, just being in this field would make the problem even worse because I would never be as competent as the quality demands. The skills that I learn from AI quickly become outdated compared to other skills like management and software engineering. Whenever you involve humans in the equation, you have to learn different things surrounding it. But if you are just doing AI research for a long time, all you get is the ability to read papers and perhaps implement them. It's always a rat race where you are constantly chasing something new. I feel that doing a regular software engineering job would be much easier and exciting because it's just a job and you can have other hobbies. But with AI, you have to read relevant papers on your spare time just to keep up. The innovation and progress are so fast that it's almost impossible to catch up.

I feel like my career has ended before it even started.

Dear HN,

I am in the final year of my master's in CS. I have a workable background in graphics/vision. However, as I am approaching the end of my degree, the industry has changed a lot. Most of the work depends on NeRF and diffusion. Now, I can stay relevant by studying these methods, but I am too tired of running in the rat race. I want to focus my career to be a 3D software engineer. Where do I start? All my experiences so far are in applied research. I enjoy it but burnout is really high for me with these roles. How do I change to software engineering?

Before I had a clear goal to be a research scientist. Now it is about being a 3D software engineer. Do you have any tips to make the switch?

Thank you.

Hello, I am not a competitive guy. Neither am I curious enough to dive deep into intricate details. I am jack of all trades but master of none. All I is know enough subject matters to make things work. Is there something fundamental that I am missing?

I enjoy life in the most boring way. Just doing enough to pass a day. I strive for being good, but my good is just average. Is it necessary to be competitive to have a successful career in tech?

How far can a boring person with diversified interest go?

If one doesn't aim for excellence, is it a bad thing?

I am really early in my career and sometimes I get cold feet when I see how incredible other people are.

What does it take to uplift myself and my own levels?

I have come to realize that just to make a small dent (as in new contribution beyond being a boring copy-cat), I would require tremendous amount of years of consistent effort.

Thank you for suggestions!