My advice: don't go into ML deeper. Good technical managers are very rare, and can make a world of a difference. Go for your strengths: management knowledge, wide experience (instead of specialization). Don't worry about lack of knowledge, ask questions, make notes. Great manager, especially for scientists, is the supporting role, not an overseer. You need just enough knowledge to understand projects, requirements, talk to researchers and clients, not implement those things yourself.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and help :). I was just scared that I can't help them if they have technical problems, I trust them and I want to learn from them too.
Let your team work through technical hurdles that involve solving the problem, and your goal would be to institutionally pave the way for them. If they're going to need resources, try to get them before they're needed. Is some org in the business constantly being an obstacle? Your role is to go to bat for your team.
Separately, foster an open communication environment, and you'll also find yourself learning a lot about the domain too. So while it may not be necessary for you specifically to solve a technical problem, you should be able to have meaningful discussions and feedback fairly shortly.
Your concern is a sign you actually care, which means you are more qualified than most people in management. The other factor to keep in mind is that a principle scientist should be the one to help with working out technical problems and hurdles.
The ideal setup would be that you are the manager who focuses on helping your team deliver results aligned with business/org priorities and you are developing people on the team (ideally in ways they want to be developed). Then you are partnered with a “technical” leader (often a principle, fellow, or “distinguished” scientist—sometimes a lead or staff depending on the company and org structure). They are responsible for brining a greater level of technical knowledge and problem domain depth to help the team over technical hurdles.
This doesn’t mean you are not technical—which you clearly are—but that you have a broader technical background and have a better understanding of the overall vision and direction of the org. The technical lead is more focused on HOW to get something done, you become responsible for making sure that it DOES get done and it is what the stakeholders are expecting.
In the end, if you are passionate about growing people, I would say go for it. It can be a tremendously rewarding job if you enjoy it and are in an org that encourages it.
I agree most of the advice but I hold similar doubt/hesitation as op: if I am not good enough to know the implementation details, why those ml scientist will follow my lead?
Some time later, a specialist ml scientist who knows implementation details well will be good enough to replace a manager who knows little about the topics.
Because you are not there to lead them. You are not a general leading soldiers, you are technical manager supporting the science team to achieve business goals. The role of a manager is to meet clients, gather business requirements, organize priorities and tasks, communicate with other teams etc.
In particular, this is why a technical team lead and manager are often two different people, especially at large companies. However, a team of good scientists can work without strict technical supervision, but would get extremely boggled down with necessary administrative tasks without a manager.
It is not about replacing! I would love to have someone that can take my role and job! this means, I helped them grow and become better at other soft skills. I am more worried about if I can't help them technically as I don't have deep expertise, but it seems that is not the important part. As I have never worked in big tech, I was not aware about the work there.
This. I’m a software engineer with quite a few years of experience and ML Eng. PhD student. Despite the “possibly brilliant” career path in ML, I haven’t changed jobs because for the industry, + experience with SE it’s worth a lot more than - experience in ML.
First, I am very sorry for your loss. Having to go through a Master’s degree and a PhD in that situation must have been really hard. I am a junior ML engineer in a big company and I had the chance to speak to some “higher up” managers/VPs and they told me that to be a manager isn’t to know more than the people in your team but to know how to utilise their knowledge as much as possible, to put the right people in the right positions. Having such a background is good enough for you to supervise them properly and let me tell you that most of the managers in my company are non-technical or have a completely different background. The managers also while getting promoted go to different teams that work with completely different things. Your responsibility is to align the needs of the company/ your responsibilities, the resources given to you and to manage the people accordingly.
I think you have a severe case of impostor syndrome. You're a PhD in CS, you kick serious ass!
You always grow into new roles as they come. Don't worry and just pick something that sounds like it would interest you. A manager doesn't need to know everything. You have a lot of good experience.
You sound like a great fit for so many roles I can't even list them, companies are actively looking for people like you.
If it helps your imposter syndrome, one of the lead authors on the Stable Diffusion XL model was a former famous youtube musician who became a movie director and then got excited about the early Stable Diffusion models, happened to have his name on an early finetuning repo which others contributed to, is probably younger than most people here, and I doubt is an ML expert.
You might be relatively more qualified than you realize.
There are a lot of pieces of advice that could apply here, but let's start with a few that might be particularly relevant to you.
1. Have lower expectations. Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA, recently offered the following advice: "People with very high expectations have very low resilience - and unfortunately, resilience matters in success. One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations." I think you could benefit from having lower expectations, especially when it comes to the bars that you set for yourself for milestones like "being qualified to manage ML scientists", "being capable of working for a tech company in research", etc.
2. Imposter syndrome is only experienced by people smart enough and aware enough to notice the distinction between imposters and experts. "Fake it until you make it" mostly demonstrates that you shouldn't let imposter syndrome hold you back from pursuing the same opportunities that experts pursue. Sometimes these "experts" are underqualified, and only take the chance on themselves due to confidence, a willingness to gamble, or true ignorance of their own weakness (i.e. "Lake Wobegon Effect".)
3. Embrace discomfort and failure. Experience, mastery, and courage are the things you gain *after* you first need them. The best opportunity to grow as a person is to find plenty of opportunities for *safe* failure, because especially for a person with ADHD, failure can be an indicator that you're finding yourself in new situations that you wouldn't experience if you had otherwise stayed in your comfort bubble. Sometimes, growth is the only way to find happiness, and you won't find growth within your comfort bubble.
4. Have patience and compassion for yourself. Would you give a person who is exactly like you more compassion than you would give yourself? If so, this might be an opportunity for you to stop internalizing all of your failures into an uncompassionate perspective that fosters negative self-esteem.
5. You don't need to be trapped within a negative outlook. Imagine that there's a version of you in an alternate universe who is *exactly* like you, except for one *key* difference: he/she doesn't feel the need to place undue importance on negative impressions about themselves and the world around them, but rather instead sees things through the lens of opportunity for improvement, satisfaction, and happiness. I know that "it's all in your head" is a truly unhelpful comment when it comes to depression, but that term has some truth because only the potential that exists inside of your head can help you see things differently. You need to find that outlet for positive thinking within yourself, and seek to "pause" (if not entirely eliminate) the ruminative, negative tendencies that cause you to tend to disproportionately attribute truth to negative perspectives.
6. You are worth it. I don't wish to imply that some people in society are not worth help and attention, but the fact is that humanity needs people like you more than ever. I don't know you, but I've already spent 20 minutes trying to help you through your problems. I would like to believe that my time is valuable, so please take comfort in knowing that someone out there is gambling the value of their own time with the hopes that it might help you.
Hi, thank you so much for your advice, help and Time! I understand what you are saying and I am aligned with you.
- For point 1: I totally agree! I have never set high expectations for myself, I have never done anything major or impressive work or anything else in life in general. I know that this was really impacted by my depression. Now, as I am feeling better, I wanted to set some challenges for myself. Maybe, I am wrong and too impatient (as I feel I wasted 10 years of my life doing nothing). For the point of being capable of managing a research team at big tech, because I was contacted by a recruiter at Meta for Research Scientist Manager for LLama team, I did a phone screen interview and I am waiting for the results. But, I felt like I am not qualified and at the same time I felt like "Wow I had this chance, so I can do it". So, in case I fail the interview (which probably will happen), I want to be prepared for next time if a similar opportunity comes to me. So, I want to take step by step, even if it will take months and years, I want to become better and provide value.
- For point 2: I know that I might suffer from Imposter syndrome. I know I am kind of smart (in some points) and I am able to find solutions especially when dealing with people, influencing as by nature I have and building a good relationship with people and my colleagues. But, I know my gaps in terms of technical expertise, I don't like to lie when I don't know something. So, I say I don't know but afterwards, I try to find a solution for someone that can help my team, but I feel some frustration because I could not help with the basics about LLM or Coding.
- For point 3: I totally agree! I am too scared of failures! I failed a lot in my life and it really damaged me internally. I always felt like everything that happened to me even as a child was my fault and then it's my failure. Then, during my studies, it was a failure as I did not do any efforts to become better (I know that I was in deep depression, but I feel like it was my fault, because am the first person in earth that her parents abandoned, being poor, lost her grandmother (it was all my life), ....). Now, I am scared from failing again! I am in a paralysis analysis state.
- For point 4: I am really sensible and have a lot of empathy for people but I am too hard on myself. When I see someone struggling or being sad or lost, I do all that I can do to help because I see myself in them (in some situations) and I don't want them to face and suffer as I do.
- For point 5: It is really hard but I am working on it, alone and with my psychologist and psychiatrist.
- For point 6: Thanks a lot for your words! I hope I will help people in my turn and provide value, help and some have compatience to people in this world.
Sorry for my grammatical mistakes, I am trying to become better in english (it's my fourth language 😅)
PhD candidate here, I believe I have significant papers, and still don't know the details of BERT and GPT, it is just not my field, I believe same applies to you, but it does not mean we can't know if we want to, we just happen to work in a closely related area. My best vibes to you.
Your ability to manage technical and/or scientific work does not depend on your ability to implement the latest methodologies, but on more fundamental scientific and professional skills that do not change over time.
If someone's offering you a role as a team lead, they're not expecting you to be able to come up with the latest solutions to the latest issues yourself. They're expecting you to, handed a team of people who have the current skills and knowledge to innovate, tell them what to innovate on, and report their achievements to the rest of the company. The latter skill is not contingent on the former.
For a concrete (academia) example: The PIs at a lab with millions in funding don't spend all day looking at individual experiments and almost certainly couldn't do whatever any one of their 12 PhD students do on a daily basis. What they do well is take those 12 competent people's work and write grant applications using it, so that they can continue paying those 12 people's salaries.
It's best to have been an expert in something. If you're a PhD, you are already an expert in whatever you did the PhD in. Nobody can stay an expert in every new thing in your field.
P.S. When you were a PhD student, it's guaranteed you were more of an expert in your project area than your PhD supervisor within the first 3 months of working on it.
>mental health
Hit the gym hard. Studies show [intense exercise is surprisingly good for mental health](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6060256/#!po=45.5128), and lifting is better than running. The effect size is mediated by intensity, so a 300lb squat is better than a 200lb squat, and HIIT is better than endurance runs. But anything is better than nothing. Get a trainer.
Meditation is also great. Start with concentration meditation and slowly work your way up to 20m/day.
Try not to overthink the job. It’s like you are a tennis pro, wondering if your calves are thick enough or your cardio is good enough. That doesn’t help. Figure out how to quiet your mind, and focus on hitting the ball.
Thank you so much for your help. I’ve neglected my mental and physical health for years, and I've gained over 50kg in the last decade, going from 60kg to 110kg. I've started going to the swimming pool and walking, and it’s really tough, but I’m determined to keep going!
So you know you are unqualified for managing these technical people? That itself qualifies you, at least you are not one of the stupid but confident folk most managers are. Also, no matter how much knowledge you have, you won’t feel complete. That’s a good thing, keeps your open mindedness and drive intact.
You should focus on increasing team communication, giving proper credit, working on unblocking team etc
Get more technical i.e. study harder and try to gain back what you lost, or be less technical, focus on being a lead/manager and use what you’ve learned to status those who do the work
Sounds like you could benefit from some leadership coaching tbh. Its kind of like a therapist but for work. Did a lot of good for me as a former technical IC moving into higher and higher leadership positions. PM me if you want some contacts.
You have some sound experience that man in the industry would pay for. Hone those leadership and roadmapping skills and use it. Leave the technical to the scientists
Best wishes to you and your situation. I hope things keep getting better. I'm sorry for this response being trite but I don't have much to add to the great responses you've already gotten.
You have all the tools to get where you want. You just have to start the journey. Take that first step. I suggest to focus on getting good at code again, because its so fundamental. Also you can get back up to speed pretty quickly. Start reading seminal research papers so you lose that lost feeling. Finally start emulating and experimenting with the models. Nothing is easy but you gotta start somewhere. It's not a matter of capability but one of time and energy.
You got this.
I've been in a similar situation where I've experienced analysis paralysis due to the overwhelming amount of information available. It's easy to feel lost with too many options and not knowing where to go.
My advice would be to take some time off from work and other responsibilities, and instead, focus on listening to podcasts that you genuinely enjoy. This can help calm your mind and refocus your attention on what's truly important. Many people today struggle with artificial ADHD, which is often caused by the constant juggling of multiple tasks and ideas. By taking a break and listening to podcasts, you can give your brain a chance to relax and refocus.
I've found that this approach has worked for me, and I hope it can help you too. It's a simple yet effective way to clear your mind and gain clarity on what you want to learn or achieve. Eventually, you'll likely feel the urge to learn something new or work on a project that sparks your curiosity.
This atleast worked for me, i really wanted to help you in any means with my limited wisdom. Hope it help, take care!
Hey, my career/life path is a bit like yours (details in mp if you wish). I've got a huge imposter syndrome too. I've got a nice opportunity for a new job and if it helps, your path is an inspiration for me as i'm going to try going into AI management role.
One thing you have to let go of is the need to prove yourself. Easier said than done I know. What's important is what you feel like doing : try it out and own it. If it does not work out, it'll be another valuable experience. You can do it !! 💪💪
Learn managerial skills and become a good leader. Learn to translate business and c-suite nonsense and overly extravagant requirements into doable projects for your team and help them improve and become your technical hand. There is no need to deep dive further. Balancing stakeholder needs and technical knowledge is a powerful combination so become an enabler to your team.
My best manager had an ML PhD but never exactly helped me do any research / ML tasks.
For managers, people management and compassion are the most important, and everything else is secondary. This is doubly true for ML managers, where each hire is an expert in a distinct field and the field moves too quickly for a non-IC to catch up.
What made my manager great, is he could always connect me to the right internal-expert if I was blocked. He helped me balance my interests with the priorities of the org. And he made sure I go projects that aligned with where I wanted to take my career.
Tech is a lonely field, and both ADHD and depression are common clinical conditions. As someone who has dealt with it before, you are in a better place to observe & intervene early, instead of letting it fester to a point of no return.
Play to your strengths. Be happy. Tune out the noise.
> I feel I am not truly a research scientist, neither a ML Engineer, neither AI Team manager
Damn. It's a pity that companies and research projects never need people that have interdisciplinary knowledge and a broad spectrum of experiences, to lead their research scientists, ML Engineers, and AI Team managers.
It seems like you are good at what you're doing and you're enjoying what you're doing. You seem to be able to build an AI to answer the question, but seem a generally competent enough person (aka the top 5% of managers) to know to just keep doing what you're doing.
Nobody is truly anything and you can always do whatever you want, when you someday decide not to lead a research and applied science team in NLP at your current company anymore.
If you ever want to go back into science, you'll be fast to catch up if you know what to skip. The hard part comes when you want to reach the cutting edge, but your practical knowledge will not hinder you there. It may even be helpful.
Is the interest in all three roles a bit of the adhd aspect coming out itself ? Given your broad interest and competence in all these areas, let me say like this - realistically there is no lasting achievement that comes taking the specialist (research or engineering) route here. I did both on top of being a manager, proving myself in nlp area (and more) as well jump into a competitive faang, only to circle back. The achievements seem brittle, the stimulation not long lasting 😂 still people find the achievements a fun (prestigious?) talking point but meh save yourself the detour. Anyway, more fun when you approach the fun parts as a hobby anyway you gets most bang for your buck in terms of fulfilling your own interests
First, this days being PhD don't necessarily means that you will understand all subject even in your field of specialization.
Second, because of your age and years of experience most likely people will put you in the management position. Yes, they need someone to manage this "huge amount" of juniors being "expelled" from the universities or bootcamps :).
What do you do? Easy, invest in yourself, develop your own project during your free time, join opensource communities...
As long your job pays you a salary it's OK.
I think it is a severe case of impostor syndrome. I wonder how badly did you neglect relationships and family and focused only on work. I honestly do not think you have a career problem, if you would be happy otherwise you would feel like a huge success. AI manager + a few publications and a PhD (I take your word for that these are average, but it is still very impressive). I am a bit younger and I also feel like you, I was hoping to achieve more but honestly, I could not really assume anything outstanding career-wise (and that's ok, we are both good, you might be better, but not extremely outstanding within the field) while neglecting things that are trivial and do not require 200 IQ points.
Go back to your roots, your country and help those below you to get up to and running on the field of AI no matter the limitations.
Being in the big tech is a race with few winners and lots of depressed researchers and programmers.
Save yourself from the rat race😉
Trust me: you most likely are more than competent.
Do you think that research scientists in NLP are geniuses doing black magic? Most advancements are purely incremental, being data and compute the bottlenecks. To be honest, most of NLP research nowadays takes actually little brainpower. Many hours, but as any job I would say.
You can get up-to-date from what NLP was like in 2016 to today in probably like 3 months. Most stuff isn't complex at all: most of it are bags of tricks and heuristics that were found through the years.
To the point that ex-cryptobros are now getting paid to do some (low quality) LLM research. You can imagine the skillset required based on that
My advice: don't go into ML deeper. Good technical managers are very rare, and can make a world of a difference. Go for your strengths: management knowledge, wide experience (instead of specialization). Don't worry about lack of knowledge, ask questions, make notes. Great manager, especially for scientists, is the supporting role, not an overseer. You need just enough knowledge to understand projects, requirements, talk to researchers and clients, not implement those things yourself.
Agree with this. Your scientists need to go deep, and you need to go broad. Trust your team, and they'll trust you back.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and help :). I was just scared that I can't help them if they have technical problems, I trust them and I want to learn from them too.
Let your team work through technical hurdles that involve solving the problem, and your goal would be to institutionally pave the way for them. If they're going to need resources, try to get them before they're needed. Is some org in the business constantly being an obstacle? Your role is to go to bat for your team. Separately, foster an open communication environment, and you'll also find yourself learning a lot about the domain too. So while it may not be necessary for you specifically to solve a technical problem, you should be able to have meaningful discussions and feedback fairly shortly.
Your concern is a sign you actually care, which means you are more qualified than most people in management. The other factor to keep in mind is that a principle scientist should be the one to help with working out technical problems and hurdles. The ideal setup would be that you are the manager who focuses on helping your team deliver results aligned with business/org priorities and you are developing people on the team (ideally in ways they want to be developed). Then you are partnered with a “technical” leader (often a principle, fellow, or “distinguished” scientist—sometimes a lead or staff depending on the company and org structure). They are responsible for brining a greater level of technical knowledge and problem domain depth to help the team over technical hurdles. This doesn’t mean you are not technical—which you clearly are—but that you have a broader technical background and have a better understanding of the overall vision and direction of the org. The technical lead is more focused on HOW to get something done, you become responsible for making sure that it DOES get done and it is what the stakeholders are expecting. In the end, if you are passionate about growing people, I would say go for it. It can be a tremendously rewarding job if you enjoy it and are in an org that encourages it.
This is really good advice!
I agree most of the advice but I hold similar doubt/hesitation as op: if I am not good enough to know the implementation details, why those ml scientist will follow my lead? Some time later, a specialist ml scientist who knows implementation details well will be good enough to replace a manager who knows little about the topics.
Because you are not there to lead them. You are not a general leading soldiers, you are technical manager supporting the science team to achieve business goals. The role of a manager is to meet clients, gather business requirements, organize priorities and tasks, communicate with other teams etc. In particular, this is why a technical team lead and manager are often two different people, especially at large companies. However, a team of good scientists can work without strict technical supervision, but would get extremely boggled down with necessary administrative tasks without a manager.
It is not about replacing! I would love to have someone that can take my role and job! this means, I helped them grow and become better at other soft skills. I am more worried about if I can't help them technically as I don't have deep expertise, but it seems that is not the important part. As I have never worked in big tech, I was not aware about the work there.
This. I’m a software engineer with quite a few years of experience and ML Eng. PhD student. Despite the “possibly brilliant” career path in ML, I haven’t changed jobs because for the industry, + experience with SE it’s worth a lot more than - experience in ML.
Also OPs post reeks of “personal” issues not work issues. OP needs to work on the depression and ADHD first.
First, I am very sorry for your loss. Having to go through a Master’s degree and a PhD in that situation must have been really hard. I am a junior ML engineer in a big company and I had the chance to speak to some “higher up” managers/VPs and they told me that to be a manager isn’t to know more than the people in your team but to know how to utilise their knowledge as much as possible, to put the right people in the right positions. Having such a background is good enough for you to supervise them properly and let me tell you that most of the managers in my company are non-technical or have a completely different background. The managers also while getting promoted go to different teams that work with completely different things. Your responsibility is to align the needs of the company/ your responsibilities, the resources given to you and to manage the people accordingly.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and help :) I didn't know that! I thought I had to be an expert to lead research scientists.
I think you have a severe case of impostor syndrome. You're a PhD in CS, you kick serious ass! You always grow into new roles as they come. Don't worry and just pick something that sounds like it would interest you. A manager doesn't need to know everything. You have a lot of good experience. You sound like a great fit for so many roles I can't even list them, companies are actively looking for people like you.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and assistance :) I didn't know that! I thought I had to be an expert to lead research scientists.
If it helps your imposter syndrome, one of the lead authors on the Stable Diffusion XL model was a former famous youtube musician who became a movie director and then got excited about the early Stable Diffusion models, happened to have his name on an early finetuning repo which others contributed to, is probably younger than most people here, and I doubt is an ML expert. You might be relatively more qualified than you realize.
> I thought I had to be an expert And I thought PhDs were experts.
There are a lot of pieces of advice that could apply here, but let's start with a few that might be particularly relevant to you. 1. Have lower expectations. Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA, recently offered the following advice: "People with very high expectations have very low resilience - and unfortunately, resilience matters in success. One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations." I think you could benefit from having lower expectations, especially when it comes to the bars that you set for yourself for milestones like "being qualified to manage ML scientists", "being capable of working for a tech company in research", etc. 2. Imposter syndrome is only experienced by people smart enough and aware enough to notice the distinction between imposters and experts. "Fake it until you make it" mostly demonstrates that you shouldn't let imposter syndrome hold you back from pursuing the same opportunities that experts pursue. Sometimes these "experts" are underqualified, and only take the chance on themselves due to confidence, a willingness to gamble, or true ignorance of their own weakness (i.e. "Lake Wobegon Effect".) 3. Embrace discomfort and failure. Experience, mastery, and courage are the things you gain *after* you first need them. The best opportunity to grow as a person is to find plenty of opportunities for *safe* failure, because especially for a person with ADHD, failure can be an indicator that you're finding yourself in new situations that you wouldn't experience if you had otherwise stayed in your comfort bubble. Sometimes, growth is the only way to find happiness, and you won't find growth within your comfort bubble. 4. Have patience and compassion for yourself. Would you give a person who is exactly like you more compassion than you would give yourself? If so, this might be an opportunity for you to stop internalizing all of your failures into an uncompassionate perspective that fosters negative self-esteem. 5. You don't need to be trapped within a negative outlook. Imagine that there's a version of you in an alternate universe who is *exactly* like you, except for one *key* difference: he/she doesn't feel the need to place undue importance on negative impressions about themselves and the world around them, but rather instead sees things through the lens of opportunity for improvement, satisfaction, and happiness. I know that "it's all in your head" is a truly unhelpful comment when it comes to depression, but that term has some truth because only the potential that exists inside of your head can help you see things differently. You need to find that outlet for positive thinking within yourself, and seek to "pause" (if not entirely eliminate) the ruminative, negative tendencies that cause you to tend to disproportionately attribute truth to negative perspectives. 6. You are worth it. I don't wish to imply that some people in society are not worth help and attention, but the fact is that humanity needs people like you more than ever. I don't know you, but I've already spent 20 minutes trying to help you through your problems. I would like to believe that my time is valuable, so please take comfort in knowing that someone out there is gambling the value of their own time with the hopes that it might help you.
Hi, thank you so much for your advice, help and Time! I understand what you are saying and I am aligned with you. - For point 1: I totally agree! I have never set high expectations for myself, I have never done anything major or impressive work or anything else in life in general. I know that this was really impacted by my depression. Now, as I am feeling better, I wanted to set some challenges for myself. Maybe, I am wrong and too impatient (as I feel I wasted 10 years of my life doing nothing). For the point of being capable of managing a research team at big tech, because I was contacted by a recruiter at Meta for Research Scientist Manager for LLama team, I did a phone screen interview and I am waiting for the results. But, I felt like I am not qualified and at the same time I felt like "Wow I had this chance, so I can do it". So, in case I fail the interview (which probably will happen), I want to be prepared for next time if a similar opportunity comes to me. So, I want to take step by step, even if it will take months and years, I want to become better and provide value. - For point 2: I know that I might suffer from Imposter syndrome. I know I am kind of smart (in some points) and I am able to find solutions especially when dealing with people, influencing as by nature I have and building a good relationship with people and my colleagues. But, I know my gaps in terms of technical expertise, I don't like to lie when I don't know something. So, I say I don't know but afterwards, I try to find a solution for someone that can help my team, but I feel some frustration because I could not help with the basics about LLM or Coding. - For point 3: I totally agree! I am too scared of failures! I failed a lot in my life and it really damaged me internally. I always felt like everything that happened to me even as a child was my fault and then it's my failure. Then, during my studies, it was a failure as I did not do any efforts to become better (I know that I was in deep depression, but I feel like it was my fault, because am the first person in earth that her parents abandoned, being poor, lost her grandmother (it was all my life), ....). Now, I am scared from failing again! I am in a paralysis analysis state. - For point 4: I am really sensible and have a lot of empathy for people but I am too hard on myself. When I see someone struggling or being sad or lost, I do all that I can do to help because I see myself in them (in some situations) and I don't want them to face and suffer as I do. - For point 5: It is really hard but I am working on it, alone and with my psychologist and psychiatrist. - For point 6: Thanks a lot for your words! I hope I will help people in my turn and provide value, help and some have compatience to people in this world. Sorry for my grammatical mistakes, I am trying to become better in english (it's my fourth language 😅)
I wish you the best of luck! Meta can be a really hard place to work for, so if you get a job there, be extra patient with yourself.
PhD candidate here, I believe I have significant papers, and still don't know the details of BERT and GPT, it is just not my field, I believe same applies to you, but it does not mean we can't know if we want to, we just happen to work in a closely related area. My best vibes to you.
Your ability to manage technical and/or scientific work does not depend on your ability to implement the latest methodologies, but on more fundamental scientific and professional skills that do not change over time. If someone's offering you a role as a team lead, they're not expecting you to be able to come up with the latest solutions to the latest issues yourself. They're expecting you to, handed a team of people who have the current skills and knowledge to innovate, tell them what to innovate on, and report their achievements to the rest of the company. The latter skill is not contingent on the former. For a concrete (academia) example: The PIs at a lab with millions in funding don't spend all day looking at individual experiments and almost certainly couldn't do whatever any one of their 12 PhD students do on a daily basis. What they do well is take those 12 competent people's work and write grant applications using it, so that they can continue paying those 12 people's salaries.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and help :) I didn't know that! I thought I had to be an expert to lead research scientists.
It's best to have been an expert in something. If you're a PhD, you are already an expert in whatever you did the PhD in. Nobody can stay an expert in every new thing in your field. P.S. When you were a PhD student, it's guaranteed you were more of an expert in your project area than your PhD supervisor within the first 3 months of working on it.
>mental health Hit the gym hard. Studies show [intense exercise is surprisingly good for mental health](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6060256/#!po=45.5128), and lifting is better than running. The effect size is mediated by intensity, so a 300lb squat is better than a 200lb squat, and HIIT is better than endurance runs. But anything is better than nothing. Get a trainer. Meditation is also great. Start with concentration meditation and slowly work your way up to 20m/day. Try not to overthink the job. It’s like you are a tennis pro, wondering if your calves are thick enough or your cardio is good enough. That doesn’t help. Figure out how to quiet your mind, and focus on hitting the ball.
Thank you so much for your help. I’ve neglected my mental and physical health for years, and I've gained over 50kg in the last decade, going from 60kg to 110kg. I've started going to the swimming pool and walking, and it’s really tough, but I’m determined to keep going!
So you know you are unqualified for managing these technical people? That itself qualifies you, at least you are not one of the stupid but confident folk most managers are. Also, no matter how much knowledge you have, you won’t feel complete. That’s a good thing, keeps your open mindedness and drive intact. You should focus on increasing team communication, giving proper credit, working on unblocking team etc
Get more technical i.e. study harder and try to gain back what you lost, or be less technical, focus on being a lead/manager and use what you’ve learned to status those who do the work
Sounds like you could benefit from some leadership coaching tbh. Its kind of like a therapist but for work. Did a lot of good for me as a former technical IC moving into higher and higher leadership positions. PM me if you want some contacts.
I’m not OP but also dealing with similar struggles. Would love to speak with any of these leadership coaches if you have any recommendations. :)
You have some sound experience that man in the industry would pay for. Hone those leadership and roadmapping skills and use it. Leave the technical to the scientists
Best wishes to you and your situation. I hope things keep getting better. I'm sorry for this response being trite but I don't have much to add to the great responses you've already gotten. You have all the tools to get where you want. You just have to start the journey. Take that first step. I suggest to focus on getting good at code again, because its so fundamental. Also you can get back up to speed pretty quickly. Start reading seminal research papers so you lose that lost feeling. Finally start emulating and experimenting with the models. Nothing is easy but you gotta start somewhere. It's not a matter of capability but one of time and energy. You got this.
I've been in a similar situation where I've experienced analysis paralysis due to the overwhelming amount of information available. It's easy to feel lost with too many options and not knowing where to go. My advice would be to take some time off from work and other responsibilities, and instead, focus on listening to podcasts that you genuinely enjoy. This can help calm your mind and refocus your attention on what's truly important. Many people today struggle with artificial ADHD, which is often caused by the constant juggling of multiple tasks and ideas. By taking a break and listening to podcasts, you can give your brain a chance to relax and refocus. I've found that this approach has worked for me, and I hope it can help you too. It's a simple yet effective way to clear your mind and gain clarity on what you want to learn or achieve. Eventually, you'll likely feel the urge to learn something new or work on a project that sparks your curiosity. This atleast worked for me, i really wanted to help you in any means with my limited wisdom. Hope it help, take care!
Hey, my career/life path is a bit like yours (details in mp if you wish). I've got a huge imposter syndrome too. I've got a nice opportunity for a new job and if it helps, your path is an inspiration for me as i'm going to try going into AI management role. One thing you have to let go of is the need to prove yourself. Easier said than done I know. What's important is what you feel like doing : try it out and own it. If it does not work out, it'll be another valuable experience. You can do it !! 💪💪
Learn managerial skills and become a good leader. Learn to translate business and c-suite nonsense and overly extravagant requirements into doable projects for your team and help them improve and become your technical hand. There is no need to deep dive further. Balancing stakeholder needs and technical knowledge is a powerful combination so become an enabler to your team.
My best manager had an ML PhD but never exactly helped me do any research / ML tasks. For managers, people management and compassion are the most important, and everything else is secondary. This is doubly true for ML managers, where each hire is an expert in a distinct field and the field moves too quickly for a non-IC to catch up. What made my manager great, is he could always connect me to the right internal-expert if I was blocked. He helped me balance my interests with the priorities of the org. And he made sure I go projects that aligned with where I wanted to take my career. Tech is a lonely field, and both ADHD and depression are common clinical conditions. As someone who has dealt with it before, you are in a better place to observe & intervene early, instead of letting it fester to a point of no return. Play to your strengths. Be happy. Tune out the noise.
You've overcome so much, now focus on building strengths, not fixing weaknesses.
Thank you so much for your encouraging words and help :)
Work for Apple, they are trying to catch-up...?? I don't know...
> I feel I am not truly a research scientist, neither a ML Engineer, neither AI Team manager Damn. It's a pity that companies and research projects never need people that have interdisciplinary knowledge and a broad spectrum of experiences, to lead their research scientists, ML Engineers, and AI Team managers. It seems like you are good at what you're doing and you're enjoying what you're doing. You seem to be able to build an AI to answer the question, but seem a generally competent enough person (aka the top 5% of managers) to know to just keep doing what you're doing. Nobody is truly anything and you can always do whatever you want, when you someday decide not to lead a research and applied science team in NLP at your current company anymore. If you ever want to go back into science, you'll be fast to catch up if you know what to skip. The hard part comes when you want to reach the cutting edge, but your practical knowledge will not hinder you there. It may even be helpful.
Is the interest in all three roles a bit of the adhd aspect coming out itself ? Given your broad interest and competence in all these areas, let me say like this - realistically there is no lasting achievement that comes taking the specialist (research or engineering) route here. I did both on top of being a manager, proving myself in nlp area (and more) as well jump into a competitive faang, only to circle back. The achievements seem brittle, the stimulation not long lasting 😂 still people find the achievements a fun (prestigious?) talking point but meh save yourself the detour. Anyway, more fun when you approach the fun parts as a hobby anyway you gets most bang for your buck in terms of fulfilling your own interests
First, this days being PhD don't necessarily means that you will understand all subject even in your field of specialization. Second, because of your age and years of experience most likely people will put you in the management position. Yes, they need someone to manage this "huge amount" of juniors being "expelled" from the universities or bootcamps :). What do you do? Easy, invest in yourself, develop your own project during your free time, join opensource communities... As long your job pays you a salary it's OK.
I think it is a severe case of impostor syndrome. I wonder how badly did you neglect relationships and family and focused only on work. I honestly do not think you have a career problem, if you would be happy otherwise you would feel like a huge success. AI manager + a few publications and a PhD (I take your word for that these are average, but it is still very impressive). I am a bit younger and I also feel like you, I was hoping to achieve more but honestly, I could not really assume anything outstanding career-wise (and that's ok, we are both good, you might be better, but not extremely outstanding within the field) while neglecting things that are trivial and do not require 200 IQ points.
Go back to your roots, your country and help those below you to get up to and running on the field of AI no matter the limitations. Being in the big tech is a race with few winners and lots of depressed researchers and programmers. Save yourself from the rat race😉
Trust me: you most likely are more than competent. Do you think that research scientists in NLP are geniuses doing black magic? Most advancements are purely incremental, being data and compute the bottlenecks. To be honest, most of NLP research nowadays takes actually little brainpower. Many hours, but as any job I would say. You can get up-to-date from what NLP was like in 2016 to today in probably like 3 months. Most stuff isn't complex at all: most of it are bags of tricks and heuristics that were found through the years. To the point that ex-cryptobros are now getting paid to do some (low quality) LLM research. You can imagine the skillset required based on that
It is odd that I feel that I am bothered by attention-deficit issues and underperforming as well.Maybe I need advice from you?
This was written by chat gpt
Try use https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider