You can't only look at demand. You also have to look at supply. Most machine learning engineers have a masters at least (many have a PhD), and almost all 'scientist' positions require a PhD. Of course there are fewer deep learning jobs available than front-end developers. That doesn't mean they're not highly coveted.
As an example, one of Fei-Fei Lee's recent grad students got multiple job offers upon graduating, one for more than a million dollars a year: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/technology/the-race-is-on-...
Re:How to Get a Job in Deep Learning
by jamesblonde on Friday September 23, 2016 @06:39AM
(#12563562)
That $1m offer refers to Andrej Karpathy. He's the Jeff Dean of Machine Learning these days.
They are certainly great within their fields, but one thing Kaparthy is particularly good at is social media. While in grad school he was quite active both on HN, Reddit, and Twitter. He had fantastic blog posts that made difficult subjects seem comprehensible. Perhaps it's just part of being part of a younger generation, but Jeff Dean doesn't share that feature.
Not sure where you are referring to but in most places of the world data scientists/engineers don't have nor require a PhD.
And more so recently with their being quite a significant demand for them in enterprises looking to establish big data analytics programs.
Re:How to Get a Job in Deep Learning
by throw_away_777 on Thursday September 22, 2016 @07:14PM
(#12561120)
What did you search to get your numbers?
Here is a graph of something similar: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/q-%22Data-Scientist%22-q-%22...
There is definitely more demand for data science than deep learning, and much more demand for software engineering or development than data science. Of course the supply also matters, there are many more software engineers than data scientists. But still, deep learning is a niche skill.
Re:How to Get a Job in Deep Learning
by phlyingpenguin on Thursday September 22, 2016 @07:25PM
(#12561177)
Though they are not representative of the whole, if there's 1 ML job for every ~10 java/javascript jobs (are those really related?), that doesn't sound too bad to me as far as demand for ML. Many of those other jobs are probably not senior level jobs, and every ML job will be.
How do you figure every Machine Learning job will be senior-level?
Re:How to Get a Job in Deep Learning
by intrasight on Thursday September 22, 2016 @08:02PM
(#12561370)
The best metric is the salary that the position can command.
But I just don't see it - machine/statistical/deep learning gigs just seem really rare.
I know this isn't a great metric, but searches on Indeed.com:
Same searches on LinkedIn: Even the "machine learning" search on Indeed, with 9K+ results has 1300+ from Amazon, followed by a much smaller number (in low hundreds each) from Microsoft, Google, others (including some that look like staffing companies).Even on HN's who's hiring Sept 2016 thread phrase counts: 14 "deep learning" 79 "machine learning"
I completely agree with the idea that being able to use some deep/machine/statistical learning is going to be a toolset that data hackers need to have. I even think that there is a bit of the "build it and they will come" magic waiting out there.
But I think the best way forward is to be working in data and figure out how to generate value with deep learning - this will be much more productive than trying to seek out a deep learning gig in terms of promoting deep learning in the workplace. Heck, that's a suggestion I would be wise to take myself . . .