The non-technical AI guy is on fire: He doesn't have an ML degree, but he got an offer from DeepMind

In the last couple of days, DeepMind research engineer Aleksa Gordić's personal experience post has been trending on Twitter. The point is that he has no background in machine learning (ML), but after only 3 years in ML, he has joined DeepMind.

He emphasizes that he is not a "computationally gifted" person, but only relies on his passion for machine learning, and he has been taking in ML knowledge like crazy without missing his regular job, while keeping his knowledge self-digested and exported to the outside world.

In the comments, he says that this blog post has been helpful to many DeepMinders looking for jobs. Let's take a look at what this non-technical AI guy has done to prepare himself.

Not from a university

At the end of 2016, towards the end of his undergraduate degree, he realised that he wanted to move into the software industry. Compared to the hardware industry, he thought the software industry was more open, with all the hackathons and data marathons, and a better salary.

He said he would do it. At the beginning of the following year, he started learning Android on his own and spent the summer interning at Telocate (a small German startup) as an Android developer. It was also at this time that he was talking to his friends who had interned as software engineers at companies such as MSFT, Facebook and Jane Street.

For some of his friends, algorithms and structured data were already second nature; for him, large tech companies didn't care much about his EE skills and knowledge, but rather algorithms and data structures were the hard currency.

After some exchanges, he realised the gap between himself and a "software engineer". For him, at 23 years old, a 16 year old without a lot of basic engineering knowledge was way ahead.

He humorously told his friend that he was falling behind (he was actually desperate at the time) and he was encouraged to take his time!