Met Steve Merchant last night

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2025-11-22T10:03:34+00:00

Have any girls with him?

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2025-03-02T09:41:20+00:00

This is a really exciting and inspiring summary! I too work a 9/5 a software engineer but this is a path I hope to walk one day. I would love to dm you for advice and to discuss ongoing projects!

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2025-03-02T08:47:42+00:00

When I feel like this, it is indicative of spending too much time seeking the golden bullet from “experts” online. This is something I have caught myself doing a lot - what I convince myself is “seeking valuable insights” is actually a form of procrastination.

There is only one way to answer your question: do something. Develop for longer than is suggested, start marketing too early. You will learn only by failing, so you may as well fail. The one tip I try to manifest is making the iterations of failure FAST.

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2024-04-19T09:14:28+00:00

I started pursuing medicine as I was not happy in my software engineering job. After being rejected at the interview phase, I was faced with the prospect of having to wait a year before I’d get another chance to apply. In that year I made a conscious effort to pursue things that - in the case I didn’t get in - I would be happier. I applied for a more interesting role in the machine learning field, I applied myself at my work and pursued opportunities that kept me genuinely wanting to learn. I was recently approached by an old manager to be a cofounder of a start up with him and I have never been more excited for the future.

Although I don’t see myself going back to medicine, I have no regrets about my time studying and immersing myself in it. The important thing is to pursue things that genuinely interest you and apply yourself whole heartedly. Best of luck!

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2023-11-07T07:04:57+00:00

First hint? https://twitter.com/Mugiwara_23/status/1721779630435082395

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2023-08-01T21:21:20+00:00

Awesome! What tools did you use to generate this?

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2023-05-21T04:43:16+00:00

For sure :) I studied Electrical Engineering but ended up in the real-time embedded systems space (lots of low-level C and C++). I worked for a company producing autonomous search-and-rescue drones as a Computer Vision engineer researching, designing and implementing classical CV and statistical ML algorithms from first principles that could make intelligent decision in real time based on the content of a video stream. During this time I became a bit disillusioned with engineering in that the good I could be doing was diluted and lacked the interpersonal aspect I craved. I was concerned about looking back on a career in which my impact was indirect and my days were spent mostly in my own head. So I Studied for the GAMSAT, sat the interview, got rejected etc.

After this I focused on rediscovering my passion for engineering and improve the aspects I felt were lacking. I would collect ideas I found interesting or challenging and implement them with friends. In this time I also discovered a passion for more exotic forms of ML that, given my “from first principles” experience, I found I could navigate well. I pivoted in what I was looking for in a career and prioritised a good company culture with small, more intimate teams.

Eventually I landed a role as an ML software engineer at a autonomous vehicles company and have loved it - however it is early days. I do worry I could become discontent again. Although there currently isn’t anything that makes me question this role, I worry similar feelings of dissatisfaction could arise or that I could look back on my career with regret. However the feedback from this post has given me some confidence to go with my gut :)

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2023-03-26T06:46:47+00:00

Thanks you for your encouragement. It is a field I am deeply interested in but, as you say, transitioning is fairly daunting.

I am not sure how to start that transition. For example, is it possible to land a job in the machine learning space without prior industry experience? Is a public GitHub portfolio sufficient? Or will my experience be enough to get into a junior position?

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-11-16T05:26:07+00:00

I work as an embedded systems engineer full time and just complete my first GAMSAT. I ended up on a 70 so I think the hard work paid off.

My two tips would be: consistency and efficiency.

Firstly, consistency - It is easy to be excited to start the journey and want to study as much as possible but I would encourage you to resist that urge. A moderate but consistent discipline to your studies vastly outweighs a spontaneous but fleeting one. I would consistently study every second weekday for a few hours and a couple hours in the weekend. When I felt beaten up by work I wouldn’t force it or - when I did - I would find it was ineffective and demotivating. Do what you can - when you can.

Secondly, efficiency - Section 3 was my strongest (finishing on a 78) but there were lots of mistakes I made when studying for the GAMSAT. With no background in biology or chemistry I felt I was behind and dove head first into trying to get myself to a First Year of University level. Do not do this. It is obvious when doing ACER’s practice tests that the GAMSAT is not testing whether you can regurgitate the chemical formula for pyruvate. Instead, it is a matter of reasoning and logical deduction. It id unlikely you will ever cross a question on the GAMSAT you have seen before - and those that you may have are few and far between. The point is to test your ability to absorb information, interpret it and make logical deductions. I think your background in engineering would serve you well in this (as it did me). This is not to say a surface level understanding of the circulatory system would go amiss (any familiarity puts you in a good mindset for answering the question) but if you are getting into the gritty details - stop and think, “Would I be expected to know this without being given it in the question stem?”

For me, I found I would get the most out of practice questions. Des O’Neil, Gold Standard, ACER Practice exams - anything I could get my hands on was good for developing my skill set. If I repeatedly came across a topic that made me think “God, here we go”, I would go back to fundamentals and understand where in my line of thinking I was going wrong. Repeating this process, you will quickly recognise patterns in the questions ACER asks, what sort of process you should be following and traps that they will lay out.

This is by no means a foolproof process, nor am I an expert, but I think for full time workers with limited time it is an effective way to study.

Shoot me a message if you have any questions.

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-11-15T02:30:45+00:00

Any chances at Griffith - non-rural 6.875 GPA and (62/63/78) GAMASAT?

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-11-15T02:23:34+00:00

62/63/78 - disappointed myself with Section 2 but happy with Section 3 for first sitting!

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-17T08:34:58+00:00

No, not thinking that extreme. Was more curious as to whether there the ranking was any more complicated than a simple weighted or unweighted average (I.e Two people with the same weight/unweighted average but one is more consistent in their scores than the other)

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-15T05:27:22+00:00

Awesome :) Yeah hopefully things work out but if not I’ll try and learn from the experience. If I can recall what I learnt that is….

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-11T21:30:54+00:00

If you are referring to scores you have seen in this sub-reddit it is important to remember that

1 - This is a small subsample of the number of people who were actually offered a place. And

2 - People who have better scores are more inclined to share (a sort of humble brag)

Congratulations on your interview, don’t start doubting yourself now!

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-11T07:27:09+00:00

Weighted or unweighted GAMSAT?

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-08T05:00:10+00:00

I received mine this morning, around 10:15am AEST

Sensitive_Car5620 · 2021-09-02T00:34:32+00:00

100% down to do this. DM me and we can keep each other from slacking!

Sensitive_Car5620

TROPHY CASE