Why I Left My Dream Job as a Machine Learning Engineer

My Journey as a Machine Learning Engineer

I recently left my job as a machine learning engineer at a Big Tech company. On paper, it was a dream job with flexible working hours, smart and friendly colleagues, and great perks and benefits.

What Went Wrong

Despite the benefits, I felt something was missing. I initially thought it was a phase, but the feeling never went away. I started to feel unmotivated and didn’t enjoy my work as much as I used to.

The company’s pace was slow, and I found it hard to test and iterate on new ideas. The bureaucracy and lack of willingness to take risks made it difficult for me to stay motivated.

Lack of Purpose

I felt like a small cog in a big machine, and my work didn’t matter as much as I thought it would. I wanted to feel valued and in charge of where the company was going.

The internal tooling also made it hard for me to learn new skills, as everything was done for me. I wanted to understand what was going on under the hood and be able to fix things when they broke.