As I understand it, DeepMind doesn’t hire people without PhDs as research scientists, and places more restrictions on what research engineers can do than other places.
DeepMind doesn’t hire people without PhDs as research scientists
Basically true (though technically the requirement is “PhD in a technical field or equivalent practical experience”)
places more restrictions on what research engineers can do than other places
Doesn’t seem true to me. Within safety I can name two research engineers who are currently leading research projects.
DeepMind might be more explicit that in practice the people who lead research projects will tend to have PhDs. I think this pattern is just because usually people with PhDs are better at leading research projects than people without PhDs. I expect to see the same pattern at OpenAI and Anthropic. If I assigned people to roles based solely on (my evaluation of) capabilities / merit, I’d expect to reproduce that pattern.
“DeepMind allows REs to lead research projects” is consistent with “DeepMind restricts REs more than other places”. E.g. OpenAI doesn’t even officially distinguish RE from RS positions, whereas DeepMind has different ladders with different expectations for each. And I think the default expectations for REs and RSs are pretty different (although I agree that it’s possible for REs to end up doing most of the same things as RSs).
I continue to think that this is primarily a reflection of RSs having more experience than REs, and that a process with a single role and no RS / RE distinction would produce similar outcomes given the same people.
As I understand it, DeepMind doesn’t hire people without PhDs as research scientists, and places more restrictions on what research engineers can do than other places.
Basically true (though technically the requirement is “PhD in a technical field or equivalent practical experience”)
Doesn’t seem true to me. Within safety I can name two research engineers who are currently leading research projects.
DeepMind might be more explicit that in practice the people who lead research projects will tend to have PhDs. I think this pattern is just because usually people with PhDs are better at leading research projects than people without PhDs. I expect to see the same pattern at OpenAI and Anthropic. If I assigned people to roles based solely on (my evaluation of) capabilities / merit, I’d expect to reproduce that pattern.
“DeepMind allows REs to lead research projects” is consistent with “DeepMind restricts REs more than other places”. E.g. OpenAI doesn’t even officially distinguish RE from RS positions, whereas DeepMind has different ladders with different expectations for each. And I think the default expectations for REs and RSs are pretty different (although I agree that it’s possible for REs to end up doing most of the same things as RSs).
I continue to think that this is primarily a reflection of RSs having more experience than REs, and that a process with a single role and no RS / RE distinction would produce similar outcomes given the same people.