How I did not become a machine learning specialist

Success stories love everything. And there are a lot of them on the habr.

“How I got a job with a salary of $ 300,000 in Silicon Valley”
“How I got a job at Google”
“How I earned $ 200,000 in 16 years”
“How I got to the Top AppStore with a simple currency exchange application”
“How I ... "And another thousand and one similar story.

It’s great that a person was successful and decided to talk about it! You read and rejoice for him. But most of these stories have one thing in common: you cannot repeat the path of the author! Either you live at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or you were born a boy, or ...

I think that success stories in this regard are often more useful. You just don’t have to do what the author did. And this, you see, is much easier than trying to repeat someone’s experience. It's just that these stories people usually don't want to share. And I will tell.

I worked for many years in system integration and technical support. A few years ago, I even went to work as a systems engineer in Germany to get more money. But the area of ​​system integration did not inspire me for a long time, and I wanted to change the sphere to something more monetary and interesting. And at the end of 2015, I stumbled upon a habra of an article “From physicists to Data Science (From the engines of science to office plankton)” , in which Vladimir describes his path in Data Science. I realized: this is what I need. I knew SQL well and I was interested in working with data. These graphs were especially impressive to me:

Even the minimum wage in this area was higher than any of my wages for all my previous life. I was determined to become a machine learning engineer. Following Vladimir’s example, I signed up for coursera.org to specialize in nine courses: Data Science .

I did one course per month. I was very diligent. In each course, I completed all the tasks until I got the highest result. In parallel with this, I undertook tasks on kaggle, and I even succeeded !!! It is clear that the prizes did not shine for me, but I got into the 100 times several times.

After five successful courses on coursera.org and another “Big Data with Apache Spark” on stepik.ru, I felt strong. I realized that I was starting to get into the topic. I understood in what cases which analysis methods should be used. I got pretty good with Python and its libraries.

My next step was to analyze the job market. It was necessary to find out what else you need to know in order to get a job. Which subject areas are worth exploring that are of interest to employers. In parallel with the remaining 4 courses, I wanted to take something else highly specialized. What a particular employer wants to see. This would increase my chances of getting a job for a beginner with good knowledge, but without experience.

I went to a job search site to do my analysis. But there were no vacancies within a radius of 10 kilometers. And within a radius of 25 kilometers. And even within a radius of 50 km !!! How so? It can not be!!! I went to another site, then to the third ... Then I opened a map with vacancies and saw about THIS:

It turned out that I live in the very center of the abnormal python exclusion zone in Germany. Nonefuckingan acceptable job for a machine learning specialist or at least a Python developer within a radius of 100 kilometers !!! This is a fiasco bro !!!

This picture 100% reflects my condition at that moment. It was a blow below the belt, which I myself inflicted. And it really hurt ...

Yes, you could go to Munich, Cologne or Berlin - there were vacancies. But one serious obstacle stood in this way.

Our initial plan when moving to Germany was this: to go wherever they take. We were absolutely no matter what city of Germany would throw us. The next step is to get comfortable, draw up all the documents and pull up the language. Well, then rush to the big city to earn more. Our preliminary prospective target was Stuttgart. A large tech city in the south of Germany. And not as expensive as Munich. It is warm and grows grapes. There are many industrial enterprises, therefore there are many vacancies with good salaries. High quality of life. Just what we need.

We were abandoned by fate in a small town in the very center of Germany with a population of about 100,000. We settled down, got accustomed, filled out all the documents. The city turned out to be very comfortable, clean, green and safe. The children went to kindergarten and school. Everything was close. All around are very friendly people.

But in this tale, it wasn’t just that the vacancies of machine learning specialists, here even Python was not needed by anyone.

My wife and I began to discuss the option of moving to Stuttgart or Frankfurt ... I began to look for vacancies, look at the requirements of employers, and my wife began to look after an apartment, a kindergarten and a school. After about a week of searching, my wife told me: “You know, I don’t want to go to Frankfurt, nor to Stuttgart, or to any other big city. I want to stay here. ”

And I realized that I completely agree with her. I am also tired of the big city. Only while I was living in St. Petersburg, I did not understand this. Yes, a big city is an ideal place to build a career and make money. But not for the comfortable life of a family with children. And for our family, this small town turned out to be just what we need. Here was everything that we so lacked in St. Petersburg.

We decided to stay until our children grow up.

But what about Python and machine learning? And those six months that I have already spent on all this? No way. There are no jobs nearby! I no longer wanted to spend 3-4 hours a day on the way to work. I have already worked in St. Petersburg for several years: I traveled with Dybenko to Krasnoye Selo when the ring road was not yet built. One and a half hours there and a half back. Life passes by, and you look at flickering houses from the window of a car or minibus. Yes, on the road you can read, listen to audio books and all that. But this quickly bothers, and after half a year or a year you just kill this time, listening to the radio, music and looking aimlessly into the distance.

I've had failures before. But I didn’t do such stupid things like this for a long time. The realization that I could not find the job of a machine learning engineer unsettled me. I quit all courses. I generally stopped doing anything. In the evenings, I drank beer or wine, ate salami and played LoL. So a month has passed.

In fact, it’s not so important what difficulties life presents to you. Or even you present yourself. What matters is how you overcome them and what lessons you learn from these situations.

“What does not kill us makes us stronger.” Do you know this wise phrase? So, I think this is complete nonsense! I have a friend who, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, lost his job as director of a fairly large auto show in St. Petersburg. What he did? Right! Like a real man, he went to look for work. The work of the director. And when the director did not find a job for six months? He continued to look for a director’s job, but in other areas, as working as a car sales manager or someone other than a director was not comme il faut for him. As a result, he did not find anything in a year. And then he scored on a job search in general. The summary hangs on HH - who needs it, he will call.

And he sat without work for four years, and his wife earned money all this time. A year later, she received a raise, and they got more money. And he sat at home, drank beer, watched TV, played computer games. Of course, not only that. He cooked, washed, cleaned, went shopping. He turned into a goofy hog. Made him all this stronger? I do not think so.

I, too, could continue to drink beer and blame employers for not opening vacancies in my village. Or blame myself for being such a fool and didn't even bother to look at vacancies before taking on Python. But there was no sense in this. I needed a plan B ...

As a result, I gathered my thoughts and started to do what it was worth starting at the very beginning - with the analysis of demand. I analyzed the IT job market in my city and came to the conclusion that there are:

• 5 jobs java developers
• 2 vacancies of SAP developers
• 2 vacancies of C # developers under MS Navision
• 2 vacancies of some developers for microcontrollers and hardware.

The choice was small:

1. SAP is most widespread in Germany. Complex structure, ABAP. This, of course, is not 1C, but then it will be difficult to get off it later. And if you move to another country, then the prospects for finding a good job are plummeting.
2. C # for MS Navision is also a specific thing.
3. Microcontrollers have disappeared by themselves, because there it was still necessary to teach electronics.

As a result, in terms of prospects, salary, prevalence and the possibility of remote work, Java won. In fact, it was Java that chose me, not me.

And what happened next - many already know. I wrote about this in another article: "How to become a Java developer in 1.5 years . "

Therefore, do not repeat my mistakes. A few days of thoughtful analysis can save you a ton of time.

About how I changed my life at age 40 and moved with my wife and three children to Germany, I write in my telegram channel @LiveAndWorkInGermany . I am writing about how it was, what is good and what is bad in Germany, and plans for the future. Briefly and on business. Interesting? - Join now.