Accepted a silicon valley job offer [tech hotspot, eng job] in 2004 over a research lab in Princeton, NJ [small town, paper-writing job] and another in San Dieg

Accepted a silicon valley job offer [tech hotspot, eng job] in 2004 over a research lab in Princeton, NJ [small town, paper-writing job] and another in San Diego [small town, eng job] upon the advice two elder folks I knew very little. Switched to machine learning circa 2007-2009 from signal processing (my PhD area) after reading the first few chapters of Elements of Statistical Learning Theory. Quit my eng job. Took a job in ML after studying many nights.