Comment by rfgplk
11 hours ago
> The reality is that an incredibly small minority of companies in the world do any real training or optimisation. It's unnecessary and inefficient for most purposes unless you are fully dedicated to being an LLM company, and still then it's a struggle. Those few that do train, they spend most of their budget on compute and have relatively small teams.
And the job postings are often ridiculous. I recently was an AMD job advert in Germany for an ML Kernel Engineer, not Senior mind you. The requirements went something like
> Masters Degree required with strong preference for a PhD with peer reviewed articles in {journals_list} > 10+ years of experience in C/C++ > GPU programming experience required > 10 more ridiculous lines
No idea how a teenager self teaching himself LLMs is supposed to even get a shot...
It reminds me of that "stone soup" story.
1. I can make turn a stone and water into a delicious soup
"17 year olds, learn to build an LLM from scratch"
2. This soup would be more delicious if we add a few carrots. Does anyone have carrots
"Increase your chance of success by getting a Masters degree"
3. How about potatoes?
"And get a PHD"
4. What about some salt?
"And publish some peer reviewed articles in {journals_list}
5. We should also add beef
"Now work in the industry for 10 years"
6. See, this soup is delicious, and I made it all with a stone
"See, you're rich, and it's all because you learned LLMs as a 17 year old"