Landing the Perfect AI Engineering Job

Key Takeaways

hello everyone and welcome back to the channel today we're diving into a really hot topic finding the perfect AI engineering role with all the buzz around artificial intelligence it's really easy to get caught up in the hype or worry about automation taking over our jobs so today I want to talk about where are the actual opportunities especially if you don't have a fancy PhD or have extensive years of experience in AI now a lot of people think that the top tier big Tech Giants are the only option but that's not necessarily the case any startups often times under the radar can offer some of the most exciting opportunities out there now if you've been following me you would know that I was an early engineer at whatsapp and when I joined WhatsApp as a 19s engineer it was just a small unknown startup until it got acquired by Facebook now meta for $19 billion but before we dive in this video is not sponsored by anyone but I do want to share an upcoming course software engineering careers in the age of AI now this course isn't for everybody but it is tailor for those who have been working in the industry as a software engineer for a while and maybe you realize that excelling in the age of AI isn't just about having technical abilities but it's also about mastering the right tools and strategies necessary to analyze your skills and really plan your career path in an AI Driven Landscape so if that sounds interesting to you I have included the link to the course with a special 10% discount code in the video description below so feel free to check it out so now let's dive into the video so first off avoid those that are all hype without substance the AI industry is full of Noise with terms like AGI and flashy products dominating the headlines but if you think about it many of the really promising AI startups may be the ones that you have never even heard about they're often working quietly on seemingly really boring mundan projects realistically speaking Landing a top roll at a big Tech firm as an AI engineer usually requires a PhD or many years of experience working in the industry but I don't want that to discourage you really because there are many startups that can offer really significant opportunities out there even WhatsApp was staying under the raar for the longest time we didn't release any user stats because we didn't want the hype there were so many messaging apps out there in the Market at the time all competing for the same pie and it's similar to the current landscape where a lot of people work kind of disappointed with the marketing hype done by Google Gemini or Devin the first AI software engineer and I have a video on that topic if you want to learn more about it the truth is a lot of the successful AI startups that I am seeing are working on things that sound kind of boring they're also kind of hidden and there's no hype whatsoever about these projects so for example automating search for government projects or things like automating Insurance spend benefits they sound really boring but these are the perfect examples of where AI can really make a huge impact you might be asking why are these mundane boring projects such a good fit for AI startups well it's because large language models are really good at processing information so think about all the repetitive tasks like summarizing documents or reading from documents re-entering data from one system to another system these are all really Prime targets for AI automation ations many experts like the author Yar Noah Harari he wrote the book sapiens and hodas I'll talk about how AI is so good at repetitive tasks AI is going to automate a lot of jobs like manual data processing cool thing is that there is a huge opportunity here for software engineers and with all the excitement and the hype I want you to start developing an eye for avoiding the overdone ideas these are the concept that seem really attractive at first but end up wasting everyone's time really a common example can be AI chat Bots that we saw recently remember all those downloadable extensions promising AI powered interactions on platforms like WhatsApp there were so many companies offering this and they were on the news all the time too but when meta actually released its own AI assistance tool meta AI now these startups are all out of business so the key is to focus on solving specific problem with a clear value proposition that is also unique so don't get caught up in the hype of generic AI Solutions many companies also fall into the Trap of checkbox mentality when it comes to AI they feel pressure to have an AI strategy just like slap it on top of whatever you already have to keep up with the competition but a lot of times these are really poorly conceive solutions that don't actually benefit the users so you want to focus on building something that solves real problems and a lot of times early excitement for some AI startups can be a trap people sign up at first tricked by the code marketing that promise to change something but when you take a closer look there's really no reason for anyone to actually use the product so the best AI startups will focus on real world problems they find a specific issue that a certain group of people face then they build the AI solution around that that clearly solves that problem and a lot of times if you tie this problem with money that's usually one of the best selling points for a lot of people for example I keep using Whatsapp problem that WhatsApp was trying to solve was that it was so expensive for people to message each other in countries like in Europe if you think about it America is a big country and the texts that we send each other were considered domestic texts whereas in Europe or in other countries where you have a lot more crossborder interaction and you would be charged a hefty International fee to talk to your friends or family solution that was that was offering was saving people money so if you can find really boring repetitive tasks that can also save you a lot of money that will probably be a really good opportunity as a startup I did also recently interview a machine learning engineer from Netflix and if you want advice from the top 1% machine learning engineer you want to watch this video otherwise this is a video YouTube things you should watch this I'll see you there