I feel like I'm at a big crossroads where choosing between a straight-forward remote pretty isolated position building practical government LLM tools with ideal work-life balance, and hopping back into startup land with one of the new much sexier ai startups that seem to be going into hiring mode. I'm a dad and spending time with my kid, taking care of myself etc is obviously the top priority, but it's hard to judge if it's a long-term career mistake not to jump ship to a more exciting project with more energized peers that could provide a better professional network etc.
Details aside I just realized that even though I feel like I know a lot of people in tech from Recurse Center, conferences, highschool etc no one has shown any particular interest when I've reached out for long-term, big picture career advice. I know no one has a crystal ball or wants to be at fault if things don't work out but it still feels like there should be some place to turn for those annoying kinds of questions.
Anyway just wondering where people turn when they're seeking tech career advice. Thanks in advance to any responses.
My best advice: Try to start a virtual community within the specific area/sub-area that you’re interested in. (AI/ML/LLMs if I understood correctly.) If you’re lucky, you can find one that’s already established. Otherwise I would start one on Slack or Discord. Then you can be mentors to one-another. IMHO that’s probably much easier to pull of than finding a traditional mentor and maybe even more powerful, since you’re no longer limited to one single person’s availability.
Going to conferences could probably be useful as well. If you focus on the “hallway track”, you ought to find people who are interested in discussing these kinds of questions.
So, that was my ¢2. HTH!
PS. You might want to consider adding your e-mail in your profile. Otherwise, people will not be able to reach you out-of-band https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28012969
There's a bunch of people who use topmate who sell services but I'm skeptical because I haven't heard good things in general.
I also have to confess that my target(s) might be phony. They look pretty cool but demand a huge amount of technical skills that I simply do not have the time to learn -- and not much employment chance even if I learn the basics. Back in my 20s I thought people can pick up skills at any age, which is true btw, but regarding the individual "me", my time and cognitive ability deteriorates so much that most of my free time is being used to chill out the frustration.
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