> At that time my M was a staff level IC TLM with 4 reports who was forcibly converted to EM.
I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly).
> Principal EM
I don't want to be overly pedantic, but there's no Principal EM on Google eng ladders and so it's not entirely clear which level you're referring to.
The IC ladder runs Staff SWE (L6) - Senior Staff SWE (L7) - Principal SWE (L8) - Distinguished SWE (L9)
The Eng Manager ladder runs EM II (L6) - EM III (L7) - Director (L8) - Senior Director (L9)
P.S. I hope I got the EM II/III designations right. I think EM I is L5, though almost never seen in practice.
P.P.S. Confusingly, the IC ladder allows a limited number of reports (the limit increases with level).
>> At that time my M was a staff level IC TLM with 4 reports who was forcibly converted to EM.
>I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly).
I think you're both saying the same thing. By "forcibly converted to EM", I think B-Con was saying the person was given more reports.
> I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly).
Given more reports and forced to be on the EM track.
I think 4 is still OK for L6 (L7 can have up to 19!).
> I don't want to be overly pedantic, but there's no Principal EM on Google eng ladders and so it's not entirely clear which level you're referring to.
I meant L7 EM - I have no idea why I wrote Principal (probably because I was moving too fast), and now it's too late to edit.
ASML for now has a monopoly on cutting edge EUV. Since this is considered a strategic technology, the US dictates what they can sell to whom. This places ASML in a pincer. The US will develop a competitor as soon as they can if they can't get enough control over ASML, and at that point ASML would still be forbidden to sell to BRICS while losing the 'western' market as well.
So they're in a plushy seat, until the US decides they aren't.
If true, does this imply the end of the scaling laws? I'm guessing all these players were expecting a certain level of model improvement for their compute budget. If they're now disappointed, this suggests their estimates were off?
Or is this a disconnect between pertaining loss and downstream performance on real-world tasks?
Scaling laws are largely about data and parameters, compute mostly more indirectly and weakly.
If there's no extra data most scaling predictions start to look bad.
None of this is surprising. Every AI/ML researcher has done a back of the envelope estimate to see how much data there is and when this must stop. Me included. It's a common topic at conferences.
I suspect it’s more the end of an avenue than the end of the road, but it sure seems like throwing more data and compute is hitting diminishing returns on existing methods.
I assume when you say "politically" you include the ongoing war in Ukraine. I think it's a huge factor in this context, given its impact and the risks it presents to folks (especially young men) who choose to remain in Russia.
By some estimates, 900K people have left Russia since the invasion [1], of whom 100K were IT specialists leaving in 2022 alone [2] (I haven't looked at the figures since then). I think that's a pretty strong indication of the sentiment.
And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just increase the benchmark rate to 21% [3] (with another 2% hike widely expected in December)?
In Russia programmers working at accredited IT-companies are safe from mobilization [0]
> I think that's a pretty strong indication of the sentiment.
Some left following their western employers, some fled from the mobilization in 2022.
>And wrt the economy, didn't the Central Bank just increase the benchmark rate to 21%
It did, that's why I said 'mostly'. Kremlin is pumping money into defense industry and into payments to contract soldiers, the Central Bank is doing what it can to curb the inflation. Overall it hasn't affected the life much.
I'm Russian, I used to be a programmer at an accredited company, and I still wouldn't be safe from the draft because I have no university education. (For me personally this is a moot point because I left Russia, but still.)
That's the immediate result. But what about later, when the war is over? Military expense is non-productive, economically it's the same as just giving people money for free while they are sitting on the couch (nobody is killed in the latter case though).
Military overspending literally killed Soviet Union, and people returning from Afghanistan war made guaranteed the unforgettable social climate after that. I don't see any reason to be bullish on Russia, even if Trump now gives up Ukraine for Putin.
To give a bit more context to protomolecule's replies: back in 2022 every analyst was predicting total collapse of the Russian economy within a year or thereabouts. This didn't happen. So, we now tend not to believe the doomsayers at all. (And I'm not saying we're right! Just trying to explain the biases in play right now.)
The ones I was reading emphasised the need for a strong sanctions regime with penalties for third party workarounds, with the reasoning given that Russia had prepared its economy for war and already isolated it to some extent.
Maybe your typical cable TV talking head pundit might’ve been confident about Russia’s economy collapsing, but the actual professional analysts and civil servants who advise governments were much more cautious.
I am obviously not disputing your experience, but wanted to mention that this was not the standard pattern. The standard pattern for forced conversion at L6 (Staff) was either 6 or 7 reports (I don't remember exactly).
> Principal EM
I don't want to be overly pedantic, but there's no Principal EM on Google eng ladders and so it's not entirely clear which level you're referring to.
The IC ladder runs Staff SWE (L6) - Senior Staff SWE (L7) - Principal SWE (L8) - Distinguished SWE (L9)
The Eng Manager ladder runs EM II (L6) - EM III (L7) - Director (L8) - Senior Director (L9)
P.S. I hope I got the EM II/III designations right. I think EM I is L5, though almost never seen in practice.
P.P.S. Confusingly, the IC ladder allows a limited number of reports (the limit increases with level).