#60 Building Self-Driving Cars in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Iglovikov, Ph.D. – Senior Computer Vision Engineer and Kaggle Grandmaster

Vladimir Iglovikov graduated from university with a degree in theoretical physics, he moved to Silicon Valley in search of a data science role in the industry. This led him to his current position in Lyft’s autonomous vehicle division where he works on computer vision related applications. In the past few years, he has invested a lot of time in Machine Learning competitions leading to his title of Kaggle Grandmaster.

In this episode, Vladimir explains how difficult it was to find work in Silicon Valley. He had harsh requirements for a salary, no one looked at his resume. Companies in Silicon Valley are willing to pay big bucks, but at the same time, they require the person to be skilled in software engineering, machine learning, and statistics. His biggest issue when applying for jobs was assuming that all people are similar to the people in academics. At his interviews, he felt no connection with the interviewers. After sending his resume to over 200 different companies, someone finally bit just before his visa expired. Vladimir worked at Bidgely for 8 months then moved to TrueAccord and eventually got his job at Lyft. 

Enjoy the show!

We speak about:

[02:00] How Vladimir started in the data space [12:30] Transferring from academia to industry  [21:40] Benefits of having soft skills    [25:45] How Vladimir manages stress  [31:30] Kaggle is like lifting weights  [35:30] The hiring process for data scientists   [40:45] Excitement for machine learning  [46:00] Autonomous driving    [47:55] Pursuing a startup [51:40] Aiming to maximize mistakes in a day  [61:00] Social life comes first 

Resources:

Vladimir’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iglovikov/

Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/iglovikov

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