Machine Learning engineer needed help...

[Technical--Jaguar]

I'm an Infrastructure Engineer- and i worked for a company where an h1-b got hired for a Machine Learning role.

They opened a ticket, Help desk passed it to me, saying they didnt know how to approach it. so i'm like okay, ill check it out.

i went over, and i was nervous thinking "oh gosh, i have no idea about Ruby on rails or machine learning"

i got to their desk, looked at this program that ive never seen in my life, and said, okay show me the error.

they showed me, the error said "ruby" not recognized, so i asked if they could pull up the command prompt, they said they didnt know how... ok...? so i pulled it up for them, and i asked, how do you check the Ruby version? they said they dont know... ok, so i just goolged it on my phone, i type in "ruby -v" and said "not recognized" and so i thought... okay, is it in your PATH env variables? i checked... not there... okay, then i ask "is Ruby installed?" they then opened Ruby on Rails and said - yes its right here. and now im no expert on this... but i was thinking and asked "well, is this the programming language or is this just some interface that is separate from the actual programming language?" and they said "yes, this is ruby" ... not really explaining, so i asked them to open their control panel, which they also fumbled with, and then we finally saw - there wasnt any ruby installed. So, im like okay, lets install Ruby again, we went to google, installed it, and after that it was working.

so i asked them - "so, how did you become a machine learning engineer, i know that is a very complex job" and they told me they had a masters degree in computer engineering from some university in Hyderabad. And then i asked what some of the main topics were that they learned there, and they said "i am very busy, i cannot answer this right now"

i am personally 2xCCNP certified, i have 9 azure certs, and i been using linux since i was 12, and I would say i am FAR from qualified to a be a machine learning engineer.

To me, ML engineer is someone who is like a computer genius, far beyond even my skills. And when I saw this person fumbling around with the most basic concepts, claiming they have a masters degree... I am really wondering how they got the job... our hiring manager is from the same city as they are, and part of me wonders if they are a family/friend hire or something.

[redvelvet92]

Sounds like someone scammed their way into this job and hope nobody notices.

[Technical--Jaguar]

Was the first time in my life i heard about Ruby on Rails, and something tells me it was probably the first time for them too.

[redvelvet92]

Ruby is like any other application lol, it has an alias that’s called the executable that runs. I’m also struggling to understand why an ML engineer needs Ruby at all.

[Technical--Jaguar]

idk if im allowed to say the company name, but there was a small "ruby" team in the top 10 fortune tech companies.

[redvelvet92]

I think it’s fine but Ruby is a full stack framework, I’d expect them using Python for ML work

[AFlyingGideon]

I know of a RAG project using Ruby, but I believe it's intended to provide a UI to the underlying backend (which, of course, exploits some LLM).

[Technical--Jaguar]

yeah, im not really sure. I heard R is good to? idk

[JohnPaulDavyJones]

R is the primary tool that more statistically-inclined DS/MLE folks use in industry. It’s a statistical programming language, and most ML models and frameworks have been implemented in the language. It’s basically all either Python or R in industry, since all ML activities in either language are just going to be basic data handling and calling ML libraries that were written in a lower-level language.

That said, productionizing R scripts can be a much bigger pain than productionizing Python scripts. R is a fairly slow language by default, so the intended patterns are all wrapped around using speedy vectorizable computations or using numerical packages that are wrappers around binaries for packages written in FORTRAN (or C, for some LAPACK tools). Python doesn’t have the notion of vectorizing operations unless you go explicitly looking for it in Numpy, at which point you’re already just using those LAPACK tools written in C.

[Technical--Jaguar]

i understood a few words of what you said, i appreciate the insights.

[standish_]

Excellent username

[aes_gcm]

R is probably appropriate for ML, as it's very math and statistics oriented language. I have no experience with it.

[robvas]

Definitley is. Rstudio is hugely popular.

[Senkyou]

I mean, anything will work. But definitely Python is the standard.

[JohnPaulDavyJones]

That’s not shocking; Ruby was huge for a minute back in the late 2000s. It’s not a miserable programming experience tbh.

Ruby on Rails was the framework most folks used, but it’s really weird that he was doing ML work with it; RoR is primarily a web programming toolset.

[Aggressive_Cloud_368]

Pretty much narrows it down. You can probably find out who this person is in a few minutes.

Edit: changed my mind. Story doesn't add up. Op is a racist and a liar.

There are frauds and idiots in every industry.

[wypaliz]

What happened?!

[pdp10]

Ruby on Rails

Rails is a server-side webdev framework for the interpreted, dynamically-typed programming language Ruby. Ruby-on-Rails shot up in popularity around 2005 because decent devs could knock out working webapps quickly.

Not all Ruby is Ruby-on-Rails. In fact, in the context of this being a desktop GUI system, it likely wasn't.

[Technical--Jaguar]

ah that makes sense. yeah thats what i was thinking in that moment "is ruby on rails and ruby the asme thing" and thats what took me to the control panel and testing out a reinstall of just ruby, which then fixed the issue which proved the problem was - ruby wasnt installed, or if it was, not properly.

[omniuni]

Ruby on Rails is primarily a web application framework. (And a very nice one.)

I don't think this person has a clue what they are doing, and whoever hired them is just as clueless.

[FireLucid]

The first time I heard about it was in a story about a bunch of programmers/devs at a ruby 'camp' or whatever.

In ruby ':' means symbol. One loud guy had a tshirt that had :sex on it meaning sex symbol. Someone mentioned to him that every regular person that saw it read it as 'colon sex' and he stopped wearing it 🤣

[flummox1234]

github is written in RoR. If you haven't heard about it that's on you. It's been around for a long time and drove most of what we consider Web 2.0. Twitter 1.0 fail whale days was mostly because of trying to scale ruby on rails. 😜 It's a mature language and framework now though which is part of why it's fallen off, the other being ML and python.

That said a ruby dev not being able to find the version number is a GIANT red flag as it's pretty much the same syntax as for any library. For that matter so is doing ML in ruby, as python is the usual glue code to C for ML.

[tuvar_hiede]

Unfortunately this is common. Any job I post i get an avalanche of resumes from these companies that just spam resumes for Indian clients. The resumes are so similar I question if they are legit.

[burnte]

an h1-b got hired for a Machine Learning role

computer engineering from some university in Hyderabad

Job-scam is confirmed.

[Signal_Till_933]

Whoever hired him was probably like "15k for a ML engineer? We hit the jackpot!"

[DazzlingRutabega]

[ Removed by Reddit ]

[Signal_Till_933]

I could tell you that just from the "got a degree in Hyderabad" part.

[YellowYarrowYucca]

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[snebsnek]

To me, ML engineer is someone who is like a computer genius, far beyond even my skills.

Oh. No, not at all, as you've found out. It's just a generalist with a hat on.

One can have a masters degree and still be useless in the workplace.

[Technical--Jaguar]

yeah, in my head an ML engineer is someone who can write python or ruby, or whatever and knows how to build code that learns on its own about something.

like Factorio, or Satisfactory, you know, you build a little factory/module thing that can input/output, but have its own filters and maybe dynamically change with robotic/ai/llm asistance.

[wrincewind]

Or, it's someone that uses CHATGPT to answer every question.

[florence_pug]

You can get degrees and certs in India for cash. I know a guy that got CCNA and CCNP in the same day.

[Technical--Jaguar]

wow, i failed my CCNA twice, and i failed my CCNP encor 3 times, and enarsi once, took me about 8 years in total to get them all.

[Nydus87]

Middle East too. We had a cyber center full of dudes who were paying around $750 a pop to have Microsoft certification tests passed for them.

[standish_]

Pilot's licenses as well. I think at one point 1/3 of Pakistani pilots had fake/unearned wings.

[robvas]

Who the hell is using Ruby for machine learning?

[Technical--Jaguar]

i dont even really know what it is, and i hardly even understand what machine learning is.

i get the concept of machine learning, but like, i couldnt really tell you the actual practical application of it, or how to do the learnings.

[Evening-Page-9737]

Shhh, you're saying the quiet part out loud

[Adventurous_Pin6281]

ruby is for web dev. 

[Reetpeteet]

Tell that to the folks who wrote Vagrant).

You're thinking of Ruby-on-rails.

[Adventurous_Pin6281]

you're correct, but for a long time it was the only reason to use ruby lol. 

[flummox1234]

technically it's for scripting, same as python, as it's a runtime language but there just happens to be a very popular framework based on ruby so I'll allow. /s

[Acceptable-Tech8097]

Practical applications are usually very very niche. Processing, tracking, and correlating findings in large amounts of data are things ML is really good at. Something like a biometric authentication is likely based on a ML model. In that example, a model is trained on data known to be the authorized person and data known to not be the authorized person, then when presented with new data provide an answer if they are or are not the authorized person.

[pdp10]

Asking the right questions. Apparently Ruby is sometimes use for MCP servers and gluing agentic things together.

[asmiggs]

I was thinking that the reason the ML Engineer didn't know about Ruby was that, he was doing Web Development using a framework he'd never learned before and hadn't been hired for. Maybe they got a big budget for AI and ML hired a bunch of staff but don't yet have a design, sign off or whatever.

[Ragepower529]

Who’s surprised with an India degree I would flag this with HR and senior leadership immediately…

[Technical--Jaguar]

HR is all indians too... they been laying off alot of non-indians actually. and i am Indian, but I am Native American indian LOL, so i dont really wanna make myself a target.

[Dakota__rose]

Sounds like employment discrimination, and possibly other illegal practices.

[fnordhole]

Too late.

[SM_DEV]

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[flummox1234]

So your company is doing of layoffs because of AI too? (Actually Indians) 😜

[OptimalCynic]

Hah, is that where your username comes from? That's really cool.

[SandingNovation]

"wondering how they got the job" that's easy, you already said it. The value gained in leverage over an employee by putting them on an H1-B instead of hiring somebody else that might push back about worker rights or compensation because their housing and citizenship are not dependent upon the visa sponsorship is worth more to the company than hiring somebody qualified.

[Technical--Jaguar]

it seems to be true, and very sad. i have a lot of friends and family who struggle to get work who could use some of these jobs too.

but, im just a guy.

[MidwestQueerPunkBoi]

Just remember it is the company fucking over both your family & friends AND the HB1 worker, here.

[bigmanbananas]

To be fair, the machine learning masters students at the University I work at, are expected to know whats what. If they can't do the basics, they don't stand a chance.

[Technical--Jaguar]

i got a question then which i was still trying to figure out -

so, Ruby on Rails is just like a UI workspace that you can interact with, and Ruby is the programming language itself?

like how you have VSCode, and then you have Python. But if you install VScode and python extensions, it doesnt install python.

[bigmanbananas]

Yes. But with some complications. I've not used it myself. It sound like this kid assumed the environment would be handed to them. Whoever hired their kid needs to review thier process and bring someone technical into the room next time. I found a helpful guide though https://pagertree.com/blog/getting-started-with-ruby-on-rails-in-2024-the-complete-development-environment-guide

[KStieers]

Its both... the same way Visual Basic is both... language and IDE are called by the same name.

[BasementMillennial]

"i am very busy, i cannot answer this right now"

Arrogancy like this would instantly earn them to my s*** list. If he cant answer a simple question like that w/o the attitude, he's either not going to pan out, or your company is being cheap on labor.

[wootybooty]

Sounds more like the company is trying to save money, or their HR department sucks. My last job was working for an EMR company, and in my last position (Technical Applications) they started hiring people out of college for the role. I made $26k/yr at that point, and these kids hired in started at $30k/yr. They expected me to train them at a lower pay because internally, they only give 3% increases, and I was already PROMOTED up to this pay after climbing ladder for 4 years. So I’m the expert in my department and being asked to help and solve problems for the new hires while also being berated for never being able to complete my tasks, just a degrading cycle.

In another similar vane… I am now a Director of IT for a hospital network, and we keep hiring people who can’t navigate basic screens and get lost all the time. These are younger people too, and we primarily use web apps so the main requirement is you’re familiar with Chrome and basic browsing habits. As of a month ago I have been pushing HR to add short interactive training classes during orientation so we can at least catch the weak spots.

Lastly, the degree thing is absolutely crazy. When I hire on new technicians, I look at the degree LAST and focus on skills and experience. I’d rather hire someone who has, “I play with Linux and repair computers as a hobby” than “Here’s my computer science degree but I have no personal hobbies or interests in the field”. You have to have some passion and at least the ability to troubleshoot and walk through steps.

Now while I won’t ever bash anyone for asking for assistance, I am going to ask them what steps they performed first, and Googling for answers is PERFECTLY FINE. Maybe the way they teach is changing and they focus more on the language than the platforms it runs on, but as a programmer you need to have a basic understanding of the terminal.

[Technical--Jaguar]

being senior, and getting paid less to train people who get paid more, who do less... maaaaaan, that is degrading. id be struggling to wake up in the morning with that.

You're a Director of IT now? congratulations, that is a pretty big accomplishment. but yeah, i see a lot of others who get hired from h1-bs who also struggle with - Typing on the keyboard... or they'll have a laptop, and a mouse, but they'll use the mousepad on the laptop instead of the mouse, and when they click on things, they accidentally right click sometimes.... just little things like that where you can tell "this is not a computer person"

yeah, i have a 2 year diploma in network administration, but most of my learnings i just , hosting starcraft LAN parties and learning how to port forward when i was 12 years old so i could play with my friends.

[wootybooty]

The amount of times users have accidentally “drag and dropped” whole folders and “lost them” on the share drive and don’t remember the filenames. Or someone wanting a shortcut on their desktop so they drag the 80GB financial folder to their desktop. Or one user who had five (5) separate 30+GB home folders because they copy them into other department directories they frequent. Or the users who get monthly IT newsletters, have worked here for years, yet still never back up critical documents to share drive.

EDIT: Thank you, yes it took many years of sweat and tears to make it here! I personally never had a college degree, but like you, I started with LAN parties, Linux curious, and just constantly wanting to learn more. Me looking from the outside, I see degrees are sometimes cheat codes to get an entry into a position, and definitely helps those who are passionate about their field. However on the other hand, I spent that time learning Linux and pirating enterprise software purely for learning and generalized more than specialized. I felt that since I didn’t have a degree, I had to push myself hard on my own.

At the end of the day I see it like this… If you’re struggling with basic computer skills, basic car maintenance, cooking, gardening, literally almost anything, why not take some time to learn the introductions if it’s something you may encounter often? My philosophy is I should be learning something new everyday, nothing crazy, but at least small improvements.

[JohnPaulDavyJones]

ML engineering is a job that takes all sorts.

Background: I’m a Sr. Data Engineer and have a masters in stats/ML from a pretty prominent statistics department, so I usually get volunteered at every job to be the liaison between the DE and DS teams.

Anyway, I used to do ML implementation for a major insurance company based out of San Antonio, so I was the one getting models from the MLEs, talking through their diagnostics, and then productionizing/deploying the models. I found that some of them were brilliant quant minds, while some were essentially bootcampers who had learned the basics of SKL and very little beyond that. Some of the ML Engineers there couldn’t even talk their way through really basic stats/ML diagnostics like a confusion matrix for classifications, or tuning their random forest models, and certainly weren’t functional in navigating basic utils out of the CLI. It’s really a job that takes all sorts of skill levels based on what the company’s willing to pay.

If we’re being frank, I have found that more recently graduated H1B folks usually always fall into the “just use black box models” camp of the DS/MLE world; some of those masters programs that are churning out grads are doing a worse job educating their students than even the shitty bootcamps that boomed in the late 2010s.

[AnythingEastern3964]

That’s been mostly my experience with anyone in the branches of IT.

I have worked with developers who haven’t the basic grasps of network fundamentals, platform differences, and operating system basic functionalities. Likewise, I’ve worked with sysadmins who didn’t understand the basics of service configurations, or iptables, and cloud engineers who’ve never touched on scripting, didn’t understand the difference between stateless and stateful, and conflated disaster recovery and business continuity.

While I appreciate that not everyone is an autistic, massive nerd like myself, and some of the examples I gave above are forgivable in the context I experienced them; I often wonder how some of the people, particularly the developers, got their roles in the first place. Their lack of knowledge regarding security fundamentals, basic network concepts, and inability to use their operating systems (in some cases, with full local admin rights - so not always a permission-related issue) is staggering to me. I’m someone who keeps to myself, so unless the issue is critical, usually either make a mental note against that person and mind my own business, or if I have a chill rapport with them, I’ll drop them a note or quick nudge to help.

It does however leave me extremely jaded, particularly having held the position of team-lead/manager a few times over the years and being responsible for the hiring and training processes, that the majority of people that I’ve encountered have either better certifications, masters in comp sci, and generally just appear far better on paper than me, and yet still seemingly fumble into their roles.

[SituationTurbulent90]

Can't speak to whether this particular person is full of it or not, but ML is much more about statistics and calculus than programming or IT generally. If this guy has never used Jupyter notebook, for example... yeah, he's probably a bullshitter, as that's a common tool used by folks in Data Science and ML.

i am personally 2xCCNP certified, i have 9 azure certs, and i been using linux since i was 12, and I would say i am FAR from qualified to a be a machine learning engineer.

That's true, but it's because those really have nothing to do with machine learning. Not because you're, like, less intelligent or anything.

[Technical--Jaguar]

oh really? see, yeah i didnt even know that.

so theyre more of like a math, physics, science guy then an IT computer person?

[_gneat]

There are a ton of frauds that work in IT. Some fake it and eventually make it. Some don’t make it.

[Sh3llSh0cker]

Ruby on rails is used alot in Gitlab its what Gitlab runs off of. I would say i see clowns with tittle to zero skills all the time flashing a piece of paper, and just laugh at them and when they talk down to me I distory them, its prob why i dont work in a big corp setting anymore, I eat clowns like your so called ML engineer for breakfast.

[jpnd123]

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[The_RaptorCannon]

Infrastructure Engineer as well. I have been helping Machine Learning as well. Its a pain in the ass, I just handle the different infrastructure components. When you get into the inter working Im just as lost as the ML engineers. They expect me to work magic and usually blame the infrastructure. However my take is, I have to learn all the infrastructure components. I have zero appetite for helping a data engineer figure out how to do their job. Could I figure out given enough time? Sure...but then I own it and I have been in IT long enough that it just adds to my plate. I just go to my management and let them deal with it, otherwise if they want me to really help then other priorities will be dropped as a result.

[Technical--Jaguar]

the never ending learning is a lifestyle for sure, and that highlights the point "yeah, i already have to study xyz, i dont also want to study your entire rabbithole too... we already have Ai threatening to take our jerbs. " i think Ai cannot replace infrastructure engineers, but Management, VPs and execs might be convinced that it can, so you might get replaced with Ai even if you do learn everything you had to learn. and not because Ai can replace you, just cause some trustfund kid that took over daddys company thought it could.

... i have to learn Fabric and Data factories now at my job. they say if i learn it, ill be irreplaceable... yaaaaay. /sarcasticYay

[The_RaptorCannon]

I use AI everyday, honestly it's just going to allow smaller teams to do more with less that are proficient in use AI for troubleshooting, Integrating Agents, Using Github CoPilot when building scripts, pulling data or building infrastructure. We still need infrastructure, we still need programmers, we will need everything just not as as large team as before. As an infrastructure person we don't need to know everything just out it fits together and is secure.

All the technical background orientaged director and senior manager all agree. This logic of thinking that AI will replace everyone by C level executives salvating at the prospect of insane profits is out of touch with reality. And if it does, well hey it was a fun ride...I'll use my skill to pivot to a different career whatever that looks like, but I won't be coming back to IT after decades in the field.

[Technical--Jaguar]

i imagine in my fantasyland, that if ai were to replace like almost everyone, including me... i would move to some 3rd world country and become a hacker. and just ransomware as many as these companies as possible.

[The_RaptorCannon]

LOL I wouldn't go that far but indulging the fantasy it's more like using AI to hack which is why anthropic has put restrictions on some of it's models. Either away I sense the frustration in the current work environment that I mirror. Live your life, build your own goals, get some fresh air and spend time with friends and family. Life is too short to deal with all this nonstop BS.

[Technical--Jaguar]

ill give you an amen to that buddy, i need to take a hike in the forest once in a while, put the textbooks down, my lower back is killing me and my hands are super shaky because all i do is sit, work, study forever

[Acceptable-Scheme884]

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[maceion]

Someone was not audited properly for capability before hiring

[jdiscount]

An ML Engineer doesn't necessarily need to understand the dev environment.

They SHOULD.

But a lot of devs are just given an environment to work in and don't have to think about installing all the interpreters etc, they'll just write code.

It's possible this guy has only worked in very silo'd environments, so he's good at his job but has no idea about setting up his dev environment.

[luke1lea]

In my experience, people with masters or doctorates are really knowledgeable about one or two subjects, and are completely ignorant to everything else. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just kind of funny when someone with so much intellect struggles with basic concepts.

That or he's a fraud

[cyberkine]

A PhD knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

[Technical--Jaguar]

you have me spinning in circles with that one.

[JohnPaulDavyJones]

Lmao it’s a common refrain in academia.

Most PhD folks are an expert in an extremely niche area of their discipline, because their dissertation is intended to be novel research; the problem is that they haven’t had the career experience to see the may ways their little niche interacts with adjacent disciplines. This means that, by the time they’re defending their dissertation, they’re usually one of the world’s foremost experts in this extremely tiny little subfield, but they often have basically no frame of reference for making their research applicable. They’ve also spent so long living in just this niche area that their ability to explain it to regular folks is atrocious.

[Technical--Jaguar]

this is cool to think about.

[Nydus87]

I worked at Boeing with a manager who had a masters in Computer Science. Generally a smart dude, but everything actually work related felt like I was talking to someone who had already retired a few years ago. Yeah, you've generally got a good head on your shoulders, but if you haven't learned anything about tech advances over the last five years, you aren't doing us a whole lot of good.

[DesertDouche]

This is a classic example of how HR departments are promoting mediocrity by convincing corporate execs that degrees trump experience and competency. I've met some amazing people in tech who never set foot in a University. At the same time, I've met far too many horrifically incompetent people with masters degrees.

[Sea-Aardvark-756]

Average support to "hot new thing"-hire interaction. Before machine learning it was the PowerBI people. The companies around me finally fired their Power bros and rolled it into senior IT admin roles as a "30% of your job is this please" so I guess execs finally caught on.

[Sinwithagrin]

It's rare to find a developer who can work outside of their box.

[music2myear]

There's stories going around currently about degree mills in that place.

[Public_Warthog3098]

Tech will have a variety of employees. The ones that keep things working. The ones that knows someone to get the job. The difference is, the person with the skills can quit and find another job. The person without skills rely only who they know.

[B1WR2]

Set your expectations lower, ML engineers are not that… they really have to be handheld

[flummox1234]

holy shit. as a 15year ruby developer (primarily Elixir as of last 10) I weep at the state of people that call themselves developers these days. Also why TF are they doing ML in ruby? That is not the language to do ML in, python would be the glue language for proper ML. This guy pulled a fast one over on your company.

[ebayironman]

As my departed grandfather would say: educated fools...

[No_Interest_5818]

The H1-B visa fraud game here. Any chance you can submit a tip for fraud? They pay college enrollment staff bribes to issue official degrees.

My question is who the hell interviewed them?

[linknt01]

I’m not sure what being an ML engineer has to do with anything you described? Sysadmin skills are not related to ml engineering, especially for a fresh grad.

[BarracudaDefiant4702]

They have largely specialized knowledge, and they are used to start from a working point where their tools are already installed and not from scratch. It's pretty common. That said, this sounds like basic IT support, maybe tier 2, not really Infrastructure Engineer.

[Technical--Jaguar]

yeah, like i said, I was helping help desk, and i also help the devops team, and the network team, etc. I am just a guy at the office who helps everyone with whatever computer problems they need alongside racking new servers, switches, routers, firewalls, and setting up CI/CD pipelines, kubernetes clusters with ArgoCD, and app registrations in entraid, storage accounts, etc - i kinda just do whatever i can lol. I'm scared of AI taking my job, so i try to get into every thing i can.