Pick the immediate direction that will put you in a position to work with the smartest people. That’s probably more important than picking a technology.

Your side projects with agents have impressed people in your org. Do those people impress you? My gut reaction is that if they are impressed by the side projects of a recent college grad, they may not be at the top of that field.

At an early stage of your career, the best work environment is one that makes you feel like “damn I’m really going to have to perform to keep up here.” It’s not great to be very early in your career and feel like “damn, I’m the smartest guy in this room.” It can create bad habits and a sense of entitlement.

And the tricky thing is, if you are a high performer, most situations will make you feel like the latter.

> Your side projects with agents have impressed people in your org. Do those people impress you? My gut reaction is that if they are impressed by the side projects of a recent college grad, they may not be at the top of that field.

I generally agree with your post, but this nerd snipes me a bit. I'm regularly impressed by juniors. By what they achieve in relation to their experience. Sometimes they do stuff I genuinely couldn't do, and that's normal - skill isn't linear. Or they think of stuff I didn't come up with. But in most cases, I'm impressed by the talent and promise I see for them to become strong seniors in a few years. Especially when it comes to hiring, I tend to look more at a person's trajectory, than what they can do right now. But your question - "Do those people impress you?" - is certainly a great one to ask.

This.

The only times i was really happy at work was when I was working with giants, people way smarter than me.

And then I made a turn to easy corporate jobs where progress was effortles by comparison and colleagues very eager to lay praise. This led to years of unhappiness and intellectual stagnation. (And money, but that hardly compensates, and I think a smart engineer can make money without having to work a dull corporate job).

Also, high praise in corporate environment often means no career progression past certain points. They already have their management buddies, and they need efficient engineers in the lower ranks.

Besides, robotics its where its at. Just ask where nVidia is investing. Or look at the demographics. Or anti-immigration politics in western countries. It will be robots all over the place within a few years.

Contrary (and cynical) take.

If your goal is to climb the corporate ladder, work where you feel you can rise the fastest.

The smartest people won't be your peers in higher management.

^ I am in 100% agreement with /u/snowwrestler here. It is very important to be around people more smarter than you early(and even late) in ones career. Not only will you learn and grow faster, you’ll have lower risk to burn out and also enjoy your work.

Man this is precisely my dilemma right now. I’m an 1st year analyst with a ms in data science doing ai engineer requests for in an insurance company where heads of analytics division think transformers are from movies. Knock on wood I pull off a pay package that’s being discussed, which would keep me for sure, but I can’t find(/failing to recognize) anyone in the company who I’d aspire to. Instead, out of boredom essentially, I’ve been doing Ai full stack development projects for companies, but again no inspiring people just repeating customized (though admittedly some rather interesting) problems with bit extra income. Am I just not looking for the right perspective?

this!