Don't just look at their current use case
The reason to join a company is not just what they do at the moment: it is the underlying mission and direction that matter the most.
Just came to realize that the reason to join a company is not just what they do at the moment (which means: don’t just look at their current use case); it is the underlying mission and direction that matter the most. For example, maybe the model a startup is building can only reliably identify why babies cry at the moment, but maybe the underlying direction is a general-purpose multimodal LLM that can eventually be useful for many, many use cases.
This reminds me of a close friend from a few years ago. Knowing that I do neural machine translation, she said, “Oh, lemme recommend a friend to you — definitely qualified. She is a very good translator.” You see the mismatch here? It’s like I’m building iRobot (alas, that company is dead), but someone recommends to me someone who actually sweeps the floor.
| I’m building… | She recommends… |
|---|---|
| neural machine translation | a very good translator |
| iRobot | someone who actually sweeps the floor |
So going forward, I won’t just look at the surface use case — I’ll focus on their mission and direction.
Some of them will be bragging, though, like someone who pitched to me: “Oh, let’s build the foundation model of the xxx domain.” I should have known that was bullshit, because the person pitching it, or his team, lacked the expertise to actually achieve it even remotely. Haha, I probably won’t be easily fooled going forward, but at that time I was indeed fooled. Just gotta be careful: someone will use the big words that pique your interest and aspirations, while they themselves don’t have the faintest idea of what they are doing.
The really good team/startup has researchers and practitioners who have done awesome work that you look up to.