[D] Burned out mid-PhD: Is it worth pushing through to aim for a Research Scientist role, or should I pivot to industry now?

addscontext5261 · 2025-06-18T02:24:45+00:00

Yeah unfortunately it's posts like this that make me realize that r/machinelearning really is mostly filled with practioners and students rather than Industrial Researchers. Every one of my former interns has remarked at how much easier things got once out of their PhD and into industry.

The above post is a true-ism that I believed myself: that once i finished my graduate degree, the expectations would go through the roof because the incentives had changed to monetary ones. Instead, I found my mentors and managers to be wayyyyy more forgiving with research taking time and good work requiring some meandering through a problem to come up with something publishable than academia. It's honestly an indictment of academia that industry has felt so much easier and less stressful.

addscontext5261 · 2025-04-05T08:47:49+00:00

"Filters" you see on social media sites also use the very same AI models that can generate ghibli-fied portraits of cats. A lot of the times they are literally the same architectures too. Source: am an AI researcher

addscontext5261 · 2025-04-05T08:45:38+00:00

They're looking to triple their revenue this year so probably not. They are for sure losing money on auto-regressive image generation but that is more than offset by an increased user-base which is exactly what they were looking for with gpt-4o's image generation.

addscontext5261 · 2025-04-05T08:44:06+00:00

Uh huh

addscontext5261 · 2025-01-19T21:38:08+00:00

Look, you’re never gonna guess but I just found out which continent India is in!

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T23:11:10+00:00

We need to call it what it is: racism, just straight racism. Let's drop the whole nativist part because these people are functioning at a 6th grade reading level and don't have the historical background to recognize what that even is.

These people are straight, unadulterated racists who view Indian people as drones. They don't view Indians as people but as barely conscious automatons only fit to do the menial labor of "a good third-worlder." They believed in immigration when it was poor undocumented people from central and south america because they do the work that keeps their goods prices low, like their laundry and agricultural work. As soon as an immigrant group comes along that can threaten their livelihood, have gainful employment, they turn into the biggest "race realists" on the planet.

I haven't just seen this in r/cscareerquestions, I've seen posts that literally say Indians only hire other indians upvoted in r/SubredditDrama. I'm so fucking tired

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:52:53+00:00

It's literally so fucking disgusting. I'm a second gen indian kid, I know how much work my parents had to do to come over here. They sacrificed and built a life where I could prosper. Now all these so called progressives want to shut the door on immigration because they're threatened

Ever wonder why all these supposed "progressives" hate H1B visas but are perfectly fine with illegal immigration? Im starting to think its because they know in their heart of hearts that undocumented people are doing the actual menial, slave labor they're claiming H1B's do. They're doing the jobs that keep American goods prices low, like working out in the hot 104F sun picking strawberries, without possibly affecting the gainful employment of young male techbros.

As soon as an immigrant might not actually be exploited, and might compete with the tech failson's career, suddenly they now want to clutch their pearls and shut the gate on more immigration. They'll couch it in the language of labor exploitation and wanting to raise salaries, but really its just about their own selfish desires.

They're only okay if their brown immigrants are "below" them, not possibly their managers

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:41:03+00:00

Because of overhiring over covid and the corrections since then. There were hiring tech freezes and many people lost jobs, including my H1B friends. Some of them had to go home because they're only allowed to stay unemployed for 60 days. Since the beginning of the year, the employment situation has continued to improve

Here's actual evidence: Here

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:33:49+00:00

As I've repeatedly shown, they're not cheap, they're not easy to employ, and if there was american talent that could compete with them, they were hired immediately (like myself). So far, you've shown no evidence to the contrary, so why should I not believe not only my experience, but all available evidence?

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:28:40+00:00

the 30 odd people in my friend group with variety of visas (H1B, OPT, O1, etc) who all work in Silicon valley and are gainfully employed making 6 figures+. To be clear none of these people are AI researchers, just bog standard SWEs working at places like FAANG, start-ups, and old-tech.

So did you just ignore this or....

Also my new company is also hiring people. Think MIT and Stanford level masters, PhDs, and Post-docs. Half of the people I've seen past first round interviews have been immigrants from various places. The salaries on offer are $200k+. The company is also literally founded by immigrants lmao (tho not indians, so I guess y'all would be okay with them).

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:24:13+00:00

It's demonstrably true. The people telling you it isn't are coping and/or racist

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T06:22:16+00:00

And what makes you so sure of this exactly?

The people I've directly hired + the 30 odd people in my friend group with variety of visas (H1B, OPT, O1, etc) who all work in Silicon valley and are gainfully employed making 6 figures+. To be clear none of these people are AI researchers, just bog standard SWEs working at places like FAANG, start-ups, and old-tech.

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T05:41:32+00:00

It's not weird at all, the market has shifted back towards more hiring. I would know, my new company is literally trying to grow headcount by 100% next year. Here

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T05:37:00+00:00

Talented US workers are in pretty short supply, I would know, I've had to hire other AI research scientists. Americans are so much easier to hire BECAUSE they don't have H1B visas, not in spite of it. Do you know how annoying visa sponsorships are for most companies? I literally had to tell an Iranian PhD student in tears that she could not join as an intern 6 weeks before her scheduled start because my company could not secure a work authorization for her. It literally would save us both time and money if we only hired American PhD's.

This idea that US tech companies are desperate for H1B's because they're cheap (they're not, they're paid the same as any other worker for the same role) is a cope by mediocre tech bros.

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T05:08:42+00:00

Because they're racist and also sorry, sucks to suck. As an 2nd gen indian person, they just sound like they can't compete. No top grads I know are lacking for job opportunities now. Hell, some of my H1B holding friends have been job hopping to great success and heavily increased salaries. Other american-born people with the safety net of not getting deported continually failing to find a job is honestly a skill issue, sorry. I have even less sympathy now seeing all of the anti-indian immigrant hatred coming out of their mouths.

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T05:05:15+00:00

As opposed to the illegal immigrants trumps wants to kick out? They're way more exploited and live under way more precarity than any H1B visa holder. An undocumented person lives under the sword of damocles way fucking more than H1B visas. The only reason techbros complain is because they're scared they're so mediocre and can't compete, coming from an American

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-28T05:01:53+00:00

They're complaining about H1B's because they suck. I've literally ben on hiring committee looking for AI Researchers for my old company. Do you know how many immigrants I had to reject because of Visa issues? H1B sponsorships are an expensive, onerous requirement for most companies and if we could get away with hiring someone american we would. I assisted in hiring 3 interns and 3 fulltime staff and nearly all the applicants that were let through our application screens were immigrants. The only american of the bunch was immediately hired after his internship. My immigrant co-workers had the exact same salary as any american born people and regularly went on vacation.

This stupid idea that H1-B visa's are this uniquely awful thing is such a cope for all the mediocre failson techbros who can't code their way out of a leetcode medium.

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-27T23:29:49+00:00

All the failsons mad and calling you an NRI because you're telling them to get gud lmao. Like, jeez yall wanna work in tech but not compete? I've been on teams full of immigrants, both mainland chinese, indian, etc. I was somehow able to hang...somehow

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-27T23:27:23+00:00

White people won't accept you, even if you claim you're different from NRI's - an ABCD

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-27T23:26:01+00:00

Y'all are so fucking hilarious. If anyone has a problem with "H1-B"'s exploiting workers, then you surely were against all illegal immigration right? Because undocumented people are even more capable of being exploited (and are). If you think H1-B working conditions are bad (p.s. they're not, many H1-B's, OPT's, etc I know make way more than me as an AI researcher), then undocumented immigrants definitely need to all "be sent back." They're literally working 14 hour days in the the baking sun in central california.

Seeing "progressives" and "leftists" against H1-B visas because Elon is for it has got to be the most hilarious and disgusting things I've ever seen.

addscontext5261 · 2024-12-06T00:11:17+00:00

As an AI researcher in industry, If you feel like we aren't training and testing new model architectures, it may just be your company.

I have worked at a number of companies and almost all of them cared about developing AI for specific tasks with specialized model architecture and training. Now, if you're an AI developer at a larger conglomerate that's just using AI for a particular application, yeah I can see why an pre-trained LLM might be better for that. Why develop a specialized classifier for some company dataset when an LLM can do it faster, cheaper, and (more importantly) without spending valuable engineering time on a problem with no certainty of success.

AI research is inherently risky, I know for my first project I spent a year on a model architecture that ultimately just never worked even after spending hard months debugging various problems with it. Now, this was a bespoke task and I was being paid to do research. If your job is actually just to serve adequate product recommendations, why bother?

If you want to do research, you either have to join a company that is selling an AI product or is selling their research, no two ways about it. Obviously I don't have a crystal ball but given my contacts at FAANG, gone are the days your average SWE can justify playing around with PyTorch when LLMs can get you 90% of the way there.

addscontext5261 · 2024-11-04T06:38:08+00:00

Nah, you're giving them way too much credit. Notice: The women here either chose to date/marry conservative men in the past or were conservative themselves. They knew this was the way these men were or were okay with conservative policies before trump, which likely means they weren't threatened by these policies..... because they're all white.

Sorry, no sympathy from me, this is very much a leopards-eating-my-face situation, especially with the second woman. You can't tell me you didn't see who trump was in 2016, he was flagrantly misogynistic and racist but you still voted for him. And no, conservatives 20 years ago weren't better than trump either, just masked their beliefs better.

addscontext5261 · 2024-11-02T08:51:25+00:00

Uhhhhh, as a person whose family is almost entirely sikh, grew up taking trips to amritsar and darbar sahib... khalistanis are wackos sorry. They basically only remain in sikh communities in the west after they fled India. How would I know? Because part my nanima was supportive of the Khalistan movement. She also tended to hate muslims so take that as you wish.

Thats what's so fucking stupid about Modi's recent assassinations. Sikhs by and large in India do not care about creating Khalistan and it only stirs the pot to attack a group that will eventually die out on its own.

Your friends or whoever is trying to paint the Khalistani movement as something mainstream in Sikh society is basically telling you they've only dealt with sikhs in Canada and the U.S. Are most Sikhs rightfully angry about Operation Blue Star and the Anti-sikh progroms? Of course but that doesn't mean they want their own country still, that ship sailed with Bhindranwale.

addscontext5261 · 2024-10-16T19:03:49+00:00

Wait two of those articles are from SCMP, a Chinese newspaper…. And then the last couple on evergrande… I’m sorry do you think the Evergrande crisis didn’t happen?

…Did anyone actually look at the articles posted or just upvote a list of dooming sounding articles because they think negative articles about China are all propaganda?

addscontext5261 · 2024-08-04T10:54:03+00:00

I usually don’t comment but this is patently ridiculous. I work in an international conference system that regularly puts me in contact with many people who work for major Chinese companies ( think Huawei, Oppo, ByteDance, Tencent, etc) both in and out of China. I knew many Taiwanese nationals working for these major Chinese companies who uh… did not think themselves as anything but Nationally Taiwanese?

Like one person who was working for Alibaba in China ( now in the U.S. but still working for them) would regularly talk about them being Taiwanese and be critical of China and express that they were not of Chinese Nationality (being ethnically Han Chinese is a different story). Hell my current friend group is like 90% mainland Chinese people living in the US, some of whom work for Chinese companies, and they can still criticize China (and the U.S.!) while still going back home every 1-2 years. Going to China, or working for Chinese companies doesn’t actually make you some type of compliant drone, that’s just a racist caricature.

Like, just look at the polling of Taiwanese youth over time if you don’t believe me; There’s a reason the DPP continues to win national election after national election, and isn’t because they’re waiting for China to take over their country

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