Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

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> is it viable for me to even think about this kind of thing - doing such a residency? Would I even have a chance of being considered, vs someone younger? Furthermore - how does one do a residency of this nature, while still paying bills (I live in Phoenix, AZ - I own a house, plus have other bills)?

Good on you for pursuing continued education.

Yes it's viable - never lose hope in yourself for anything. The Brain Residency has no age requirement; in fact, the program looks for diverse academic/career experiences. You'd be surprised how close you are to your dream job if you are passionate, hardworking, and lucky.

I too, was intimidated by the math & magic of ML when I first took Andrew Ng's Intro to Machine Learning Course 4 years ago (my first exposure). I took regular CS courses in college and started focusing on ML 1.5 years ago. Beyond taking courses, I highly recommend building your own projects - it exercises your independent research ability and creativity.

The Brain residency pays a good wage for the SF Bay Area (comparable to new grad salary at average tech firms), so you should be able to pay your bills. I've heard rumors that many other companies highly invested in ML are following in Google Brain's example and starting similar residency programs. Your ML career path need not be at Google, though we're a pretty solid choice ;)

> I too, was intimidated by the math & magic of ML when I first took Andrew Ng's Intro to Machine Learning Course 4 years ago (my first exposure).

Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. I will take them to heart.

I got my first taste of modern machine learning when I took Andrew Ng's ML Class (sponsored by Stanford), in the fall/winter of 2011; I completed and passed it. At the same time, I was also taking Thrun and Norvig's AI Class; I had to drop out due to personal reasons.

In 2012, after Thrun founded Udacity, they released the CS373 "Build Your Own Self-Driving Vehicle" course (I probably have that title wrong for the time; they changed the name of the course later) - it was meant as a stand-in for the original AI Class (I think there were licensing issues or something that prevented them from presenting it - they later incorporated it as a part of their offerings). I jumped at the chance, and completed that course as well.

When they announced this Nanodegree course, I knew I had to apply. So far, things are going well with the course. I'm in the November (2016) cohort, and currently working on the behavioral cloning project.

I do have in mind several personal projects to pursue, once I can come up for air from this course (most of my free time has been consumed by it). I do need more education, though, which is why I want to pursue the BA and MA. Two of my weak areas are calculus and stats/probabilities - which ML is heavily reliant on (plus, I really want to understand what is going on "under the covers" as well).

Onward and upward!

>> "disclosure: I work at Google Brain"

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>> "I too, was intimidated by the math & magic of ML when I first took Andrew Ng's Intro to Machine Learning Course 4 years ago (my first exposure). I took regular CS courses in college and started focusing on ML 1.5 years ago."

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That's awesome, congrats!

Appears you have written about it too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13440813

Reply on news.ycombinator.com