AI Engineers are not genies.

Hi #connections thanks for your support to start this different culture while sharing the experience I had with one of the #ai firm.

?This article is not against the firm instead the culture regarding understanding the pain behind #ai & ethics one should have while dealing with their employee at the same time.

But let's make it an interesting case study for Data Science Hiring & Improvement Analysis for building solutions with respect to AI.

Note: I didn't want to defame anyone, it's just the experience that is much needed to share, which will help individuals & companies to be serious while hiring.

Summary: I really like the way they have portrait their #ai startup backed by a 20 year old experience firm in hardware. Building anything from scratch to leading a firm in any domain needs a lot of courage, risk & self belief which is the first thing I love about them and their founders.

Scene 1: But this is not right if you are getting into new segment of #ai without any good AI engineer or maybe consultant as with my manager it's very difficult for me to make him understand that some stuff takes time with R & D while having proper helping hands. After spending good time with respect to different state of the art models not getting what I was looking for that time & without proper communication plus with lack of knowledge regarding fundamentals of AI but he is experience in product building but with respect to coming up with #computervision fundamental it's just zero. The kind of task I am working with them is very interesting & challenging ta the same time for which full day and night contributing my time with efforts but in 2 months also it's become frustration for me to deal with some who don't know anything about fundamentals of #ai .

Funny Scene: Let me share some of my experience with my manager & really from my heart don't want to portrait that he doesn't have knowledge but yes for sure he doesn't have the basic knowledge about #ai , he used to say vivek I only understand that 1 + 1 = 2 but with data science things don't work in the same way. Even you guys will agree with me that to build something 1 + 1 = 2 with respect to Data Science takes a lot of time with R & D for such business use cases. One of the funny incident is once I told him that sir we can mask the images & then use some state of the art then he asked me are you talking about the mask that people are wearing, deeply I am shocked but again I tried to put my efforts to make him understand the things in layman words that how things work but sadly he is not interested to listen for the same.

Scene 2: Then after 2 months we got a common meeting with the founders where we all had heavy conversation & I am allotted to another task which is also not that easy with vision but I made it with the small POC for the 1st task in 25 days & another in 20 days, here is the some more real frustration started for me. Due to some urgency I went home soon after the meeting with founders but doing my task day & night. Every 3rd or 4th day I am dropping mail to the manager while putting founders in cc but sadly no response. Dropped mails regarding Data Collection to come up with generalized results & achieved really good results even though I am confident enough that if proper Data & time is there I can build something which is not in the market ,really I am feeling good myself to see the results but no reply from manager & founders.

From being engineering walk-out till here worked with different founders, no matter how busy you are but replying to email doesn't even take a minute & you don't believe that I use to mail founders of Unicorns even from them I use to get reply within 24 hours but from my last company they didn't bother to reply since weeks.

Data Culture: I dropped multiple emails regarding data collection but again no response. VisAI Labs started 3 years back still they don't have a proper data culture. Computer Vision algorithms which uses machine learning & deep learning heavily dependent on Data & sometime it may take time to figure out the right data set to work with, but there is no support with respect to data collection after sending multiple emails to my manager & founders(as I was reporting to them directly).This shows how managers of this particular firm are ignorant to machine learning, deep learning & computer vision algorithms.

HR Round: After completing both tasks waited for their reply but no response then finally called HR told him the whole situation & got me the update otherwise release me. I don't want to waste my time. I really feel worthless as I have done good results for the POC & even found all 3 dimensions(they will understand after reading this) using vision ,very excited to talk to them & thought to ask for the resources I want to make something which is not in the market.

Discussion with HR: At the time when I had final call with HR, he told me they are too busy & way of founders working is not matching with my way of working as they need the solution within 3 months which is very odd to listen for me after coming too close with my R & D. After talking to HR I point out some the things like:

???????????????????????????????????????1.)They could have told me the same 2 months, why they wasted my 2 months of hard work, now I can't even make the code & project details open source.

????????????????????????????????????????2.)Way of working can't be matched if communication is not there ,replying to emails doesn't take that much time.

??????????????????????????????????????????3.)Solution can't be built in just 3 months with use cases which require research with several hit & runs where I was working alone which will take time for me.

????????????????????????????????????????????4.)While hiring they should be clear cut in how much time they are looking for which product at the final round with the candidate to secure the time & effort for an engineer.

At the end HR agree to all points & agree that they are new in #ai but why because of them good engineers should suffer , on serious note this is one of the worst experiences I had even a small AI Startup is much better without being backed by anyone. Then I told him let's not waste time now, do release me(they can't put defamation against me if they want to as I am just sharing my experience while I am having all the recordings with the HR where he agreed to everything & said sorry multiple times).

I really like their HR Mr.Ravi from https://visailabs.com/ backed by https://www.e-consystems.com/. Even after such experiences, I told him that I did not expect any compensation & only expected a call from the founder (I later realized that it was disappointing to expect calls from those who did not have time to reply to the mail).

Department's name is VisAI Labs. VIS for vision and AI for Artificial Intelligence. Most of the leads do not have even basic computer vision knowledge. They are making progress not because of the leads but because of a few engineers who know computer vision and AI. Later I came to know that these engineers won't even stay at least two years in the company. First of all, people who want to study AI must understand the fundamentals with intuition at first & without mathematics you cannot make good progress in AI.AI is not your typical software development. Most of them even do not know what a vector is, how can one expect them to know gradient descent. No AI engineer does not want to work under a lead who does not know AI.

Conclusion:

????????????????????1.)Companies waste their time & money as they are not clear why they are hiring.

????????????????????2.)Expecting results in 3 months from a computer vision engineer without a team for such use cases which is the first R & D couple of months.

????????????????????3.)Not having experience as an AI engineer & consultant for the company.

????????????????????4.)Managers & AI leads are lacking basic computer vision fundamentals. No doubt they know how to sell the product but I am a computer vision engineer where I am expecting a good environment with respect to the same which is zero again.

?????????????????????5.)For some days it feels like worthless & whatever solution I have worked with can't share as well.

??????????????????????6.)At least the founder & manager should have a common call with me but again I guess they are too busy because they can't even bother to reply to mail then how could they have a common call.

I Hope this article will help out people to raise their voice for the betterment of management & hiring.

Now, I am feeling good after writing this & not against them. I really learnt a lot with social culture but not with AI as there is nothing with respect to computer vision.