Starting my Full Time Role as a ML Engineer and AI Content Creator

Part 2 (2019)
1

Hello Folks,
This time I have some great news to share that I’m really excited about! :smiley:

https://medium.com/@init_27/a-full-time-ml-role-1-million-blog-views-10k-podcast-downloads-a-community-taught-ml-engineer-96f99b91c5ee

This is really more of an extended and personal thank you note of the blogpost above to everyone that has been part of my journey. I met many smart and wise people who would always, always help me on these forums so I have to share my achievement here.

After failing the Google AI Residency interview, I really felt bad for not spending time in the community and when I decided to spend time on doing community work, run study groups and help organise meetups and even eventually start a podcast again the folks from these forums were very welcoming and helpful to me :slight_smile:

This is a really big personal moment for me, something that I really never imagined happening so soon even though, I was slowly and variably working towards it. So I’d spend some time giving a shoutout to folks that were too kind to me, note that this will def be a non-exhaustive list.

@radek , for inspiring all of us to really embrace the fast.ai courses and sharing his learnings. I quite often shamelessly posted many dumb questions and he was too kind with his time to me.

@Ekami , A freelancer from here who taught me all of his trade secrets! Without his help, I wouldn’t have gotten started with DL Freelancing.

The Amazing TWiML AI Group, where I learned a lot to organise meetups and study groups with @miwojc, @kai and Christian.

Data Science Network and Jovian Team :nerd_face:

A little interesting story about the wonders of these forums. Earlier this year, two fast.ai fellows: @aakashns and @siddhantujjain, you might know them from DSNet the most active community in India in terms of fast.ai groups started a company to build a Jupyter tool that really resonates with the course’s thoughts on Jupyter notebooks.

I got my first remote job thanks to fast.ai forums, when I applied for a position on the team, since they already recognised me via the forums, the interview process was really a simple call about understanding the role and if it was a great fit. I’m really grateful to the team and I learnt a lot during my work with them.

I’d highly recommend checking out Jovian.ml, the platform really deserves a separate thread of discussions but it’s a free and open source tool that would make you like notebooks a little more I believe :slight_smile:

@hiromi for the amazing set of notes! Those were the best ways of revising the lectures.

Also to many amazing people that I interviewed and got to know via the forums. Thanks for defining my journey.

Finally, to the heart of the course and family (I like the family word better than forums or community :slight_smile: ):
Previously I wasn’t really in a good position to thank the team for my achievements. But I’d really like to thank @jeremy @rachel and @sgugger for all of my achievements (Any tiny ones) on Kaggle/ML/Blogging :slight_smile:

If they hadn’t created this amazing community and course, I wouldn’t have been able to get a full time role.

I hope everyone will excuse the multiple tags and notifications but I’m so excited that I really wanted to tell it individually to everyone and tag mention them.

I’m really excited and super grateful to be starting my role as a ML Engineer and AI Content Creator at H2O.ai

All thanks to fast.ai
If you’re here, believe the course, spend time on the forums, talk to people but most importantly build lots of models and code a lot. And follow the things Jeremy says to do. Believe me, it’ll do wonders. I hope to continue learning more and now start a new chapter of my ML journey in a full time role :slight_smile:

41 Likes
2

Huge congrats Sanyam!!! :slightly_smiling_face: :tada:

And thank you for sharing your story publicly. The fast.ai community has been the first one to me where I experienced that there can be value in an online community and that the community can be very supportive. I still am only convincing myself that there is value in being a creator and sharing helpful content on the forums or a wider web, helping others along the way. I know this may sound ridiculous but I don’t think we are born with the ABC of posting, tweeting and in general speaking out in public (or like in your case, conducting amazing interviews :slight_smile: ). This is not an innate ability and something that we need to learn.

And so I feel that your example is super important Sanyam, because it shows us that yes, being involved with the community can make the difference in the lives of others, the people we try to help, but that it can actually work wonders for ourselves as well. I know that this is sort of the message that Jeremy and Rachel have been sharing in the lectures and via their blog posts, but there are some stubborn folks (one of whom I know quite intimately :wink: I often see the guy in the mirror when I shave) who need all the examples in the world to grasp this message.

Thank you Sanyam for everything I continue to learn from you. I’m sure you will kick butt in your new role! :smile:

PS. Just as a side note - this is a huge success by Sanyam, but think how much time and work this required. The perception that anything of this is easy or can be expedited in some way, done overnight is completely false. I feel this is a message that needs to be emphasized - I do not know of many other people who have been so persistent over such a long period of time as Sanyam. Quite possibly, I do not know of any other such person :smile:

12 Likes
3

Wow, @init_27 what a great story. Thanks for sharing your journey — its well deserved, as I know I have benefited significantly from your various contributions and posts. This story really does make me so very happy.

One follow up question — I really want to know more about Jovian.ml — after your suggestion I spent a couple of hours playing with it and I couldn’t believe that I have never heard of it given its such an amazing tool. Concrete questions:

  • What is offered in the pro version?
  • Are there any features that you did not like?
  • How popular is this in the fast.ai community? Are people using this on a day-to-day basis?

I’m asking because I’m doing research on tools that might help with notebooks as part of my role at GitHub.

5 Likes
4

Congratulations Sanyam. :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Sanyam, watching your progress and all your efforts on the forum and elsewhere motivates me to keep pursuing this despite how wild and crazy it can get. Thanks for all you have done, well done, and congratulations!!!

1 Like
6

Huge congrats Sanyam @init_27 !!!

1 Like
7

i have been collecting a lot of notebook tools, other ML helper tools. going to put all of them in a public repo soon, will ping you, when it’s done. might ease your research a bit.

2 Likes
8

Sounds great! Please do let me know when its public!

1 Like
9

You’re too kind Radek, Thank you for the amazing words and for being a mentor to all of us .

(I know we all are fans of radek’s amazing kaggle starter kernels and writeups so the following is an extension of his words, something that I’d really like to share w everyone)

A quick suggestion the amazing people here. Personally, doing community work in any capacity: study groups/blogging/kaggle starter threads or discussions or kernels has been the most amazing learning experience for me (Not sure what I’m good at or even if I’m good at any to be frank :slight_smile: ).

The secret doesn’t just lie in teaching something, it’s also about many kind people actively sharing feedback and then even helping you improve further. Knowledge is the greatest wealth that we can share, I wish to make a world a better place, I’m sure we all do. But I only know a few things about code and even little so about ML and I’m def not the richest person and can’t eliminate all of the world’s major issues that, but I can try and help share the knowledge that I’ve picked up and point it to other people I meet online.

I was always amazed by why Jeremy and Rachel did it. They’re “true saints” (Lex Fridman Podcast Reference). But I invite everyone on the community, who is amazed by their efforts and wants to spread it futher, the fast.ai team has reached thousands of people. If we all try to take some time, a few hours in a month/week/daily-it’ll be an amazing experience. Even if we share their message and knowledge to a small group of 10 people around us, we can together really make ML Uncool :slight_smile: And these efforts can be very rewarding too:

  • A person who just got a job via the chain of these events.
5 Likes
10

Thanks a lot Hamel.

I’ll probably request @aakashns to share the best details since now I’m not a part of the team.

11

Hi @hamelsmu,
It’s great to hear that you liked what we’re doing at Jovian (I’m one of the founders). To answer your question, the Pro version offers private deployment, access control, custom Slack/API integrations and some other features that help data science teams manage their work & collaborate more easily.

We’re just an email away at hello@jovian.ml , if you’d like to discuss further!

1 Like
12

Congratulations! That’s wonderful!

1 Like
13

Huge congratulations, Sanyam. I second what @radek said about realizing what a tremendous effort you have made this past year. I’ve followed your progress over the last year or so and enjoyed many of your posts. I think the first post of yours I came across was about building your own machine learning workstation.

Two characteristics stand out in your mindset:
You systematically
(1) Seek out and take on tasks that provide service to others in the Deep Learning community.
(2) Set yourself tremendous, rigorous, nearly impossible goals and strive to meet them.

The end result is that
(1) Your work benefits many people.
(2) If you succeed at even a fraction of each goal, you accomplish a lot.

I’m sure I that speak for much of the Fastai community when I say that I:
– Am grateful that you shared your inspiring story, showing how an enterprising person followed their passion for deep learning, and by means of great effort and work, achieved a wonderful goal in a relatively brief time
– Wish you Success and Good Fortune on your journey with H2O.ai and beyond
– Hope you will keep us (the Fastai community) updated on your further adventures!

Regards,
Joseph

4 Likes
14

Congrats, I watched the content you helped created on Youtube, I appreciate the work you’ve done for the community.

2 Likes
15

The secret doesn’t just lie in teaching something, it’s also about many kind people actively sharing feedback and then even helping you improve further. Knowledge is the greatest wealth that we can share, I wish to make a world a better place, I’m sure we all do. But I only know a few things about code and even little so about ML and I’m def not the richest person and can’t eliminate all of the world’s major issues that, but I can try and help share the knowledge that I’ve picked up and point it to other people I meet online. krogerfeedback survey

I was always amazed by why Jeremy and Rachel did it. They’re “true saints” (Lex Fridman Podcast Reference). But I invite everyone on the community, who is amazed by their efforts and wants to spread it futher, the fast.ai team has reached thousands of people.

1 Like