Has anyone had any experience with giving up a lucrative job like this to try and get into another area of CS? How did it go? It's a tough call, I will definitely regret not getting into ML & AI if it really picks up in the future, but I will regret leaving FAANG even more if the ML revolution doesn't materialize / if I fail. Should I just try to continue to ride the FAANG gravy train for as long as possible, then try and do some other stuff?
Obviously projecting a lot based on two paragraphs here but seems like you're suffering from ennui and are casting about for something to fill the void. Day dreaming about school or a different type of company or technology is just that. Dreams which probably do not reflect reality. Keep the cushy gig and start looking for purpose in a hobby, charity work, family, travel, whatever. If you hit on something that will pay you enough to live then great, do it. Otherwise, keep the cushy gig, do it in your spare time, and save money until all your time is spare.
However, this isn't universal advice. There are people who don't want/like risk. They want a safe and steady job that gives them status, preferably without too much stress and a good salary. In exchange they agree to play corporate office games and doing less exciting work. And that's ok.
The key is (a) figuring out what you want and what kind of person you are, (b) accepting that life is a probabilistic endeavor and you can't take risk out of it. Why do you want to go into ML? Are you hacking something in your spare time? Is it because it seems cool and trendy? Can you go into an ML role at your current workplace?
By then, you also maybe have a family who will change how you look at the world completely. Also, you would have a good CV which will give you a job anytime you need one.
Yes, it is a safe route, but also one that leads to freedom, which is very powerful.
There's still the application layer. Be an expert in a field and build something on top of the foundations that others set down.
I think big tech is a regretful place to be though. It depends entirely on what you would regret. Some regret not having kids. Some regret not doing more. Some regret doing too much and missing out on life.
I think some people just have a pioneering spirit that most won't understand. It really doesn't matter for humanity whether you invent the first smartphone or electric car or land on Mars. Someone else will do it. Often they do it months later, sometimes decades in the case of expensive things like space travel. You probably change the world more as a big tech engineer than a CEO of a multi-million dollar company.
Money is everywhere. It's easier to optimize for what you want to do that pays well, rather than what pays the most. Because what pays most often lands you with high living costs. Wealth attracts rats too.
I don't think my career is anywhere close to a rocket ship at the moment .. there is a chance that ML/DL gets a lot bigger in the next 2-3 years (e.g. Satya Nadella's recent talk circuits, that is the timeline he predicts). What this means for me is that I need to get exceptionally lucky to get on to the next rocket ship. I have no clue who that is, despite having a CV for it.
Not discouraging you but just sharing my journey. If anyone has any suggestions for what the rocket ship, please enlighten me.
See ChatGPT, CoPilot and co. Only very few people actually worked on those systems and even less were actually ML researchers. For me, it sounds like you have a strong case of FOMO.
Back to your actual question. Hard to give advice without more information. Is there any chance for further career development in your current position? Any way to branch out into something adjacent? Focus more on backend or frontend?
1. Do ML at a FAANG.
2. Figure out if you want to do research or enginerring because there's a big difference between the two.
3. Be more clear about "ML picks up" means to you. It's quite popular now - I don't know what you expect to change, and if something changes, I don't know why that's necessarily good for your career.
Stressful but worth it.
Go live your life. It’s the only one you’ll get.
You're young. You're at the age where taking risks and maybe eating a little dirt as a result is a thing you can tolerate -- or at least tolerate a lot more than later in life. Take the risks now, when the worst-case results are things you can recover from relatively easily.