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>If you were hiring, can you tell me why you might not even do a phone interview? Ph.D. in AI will probably scare off anyone who has a typical business app dev

>If you were hiring, can you tell me why you might not even do a phone interview? Ph.D. in AI will probably scare off anyone who has a typical business app development or integration job. It's just hard to imagine someone with this level of education grinding out bugs in garbage legacy code, or calling vendors to ask why their SOAP web service doesn't work according to documentation. Now, whether you would even care for such a job is another question. Some of them are quite challenging and require excellent system thinking skills, but there is zero glory in delivering the final product. I'm not familiar with the specific of Bay Area job market, though.

shakkhar 8y ago
Exactly the first thing that came to my mind. OP may be overqualified for the jobs he is applying for. Your run-of-the-mill AI startup doesn't have any suitable problem for a Ph.D. Yes, the OP happens to be 60. But there is no reason to speculate ageism based on just that. May be he / she has a 4-page resume. May be he is applying to series A start-ups. May be OP has switched a few jobs in quick succession recently. Too many unknowns to provide any answer.
randcraw 8y ago
Another challenge might be how much AI has changed in the past 35 years. In 1983, AI meant expert systems, small neural nets, phrase-structured NLP, symbolic reasoning, and a lot of custom models that embedded knowledge into heuristic-driven unstructured functions, like Minsky's Society of Mind. The challenge now may be how to present your skills in ways that convinces others that they're up-to-date or relevant. I can definitely see why many employers might be wary of a PhD with a 35 year old history working in R&D who might have drifted away from the cutting edge (i.e. published research). Obviously if you can emphasize relevant domain expertise (a major advantage of being experienced), you may be able to turn your liability into an asset. I know military and intel contractors value domain experience much more than do startups. Sell yourself as a principal scientist with "the right stuff". Large corporations buy into that.

shakkhar 8y ago

Exactly the first thing that came to my mind. OP may be overqualified for the jobs he is applying for. Your run-of-the-mill AI startup doesn't have any suitable problem for a Ph.D. Yes, the OP happens to be 60. But there is no reason to speculate ageism based on just that. May be he / she has a 4-page resume. May be he is applying to series A start-ups. May be OP has switched a few jobs in quick succession recently. Too many unknowns to provide any answer.

randcraw 8y ago

Another challenge might be how much AI has changed in the past 35 years. In 1983, AI meant expert systems, small neural nets, phrase-structured NLP, symbolic reasoning, and a lot of custom models that embedded knowledge into heuristic-driven unstructured functions, like Minsky's Society of Mind. The challenge now may be how to present your skills in ways that convinces others that they're up-to-date or relevant. I can definitely see why many employers might be wary of a PhD with a 35 year old history working in R&D who might have drifted away from the cutting edge (i.e. published research). Obviously if you can emphasize relevant domain expertise (a major advantage of being experienced), you may be able to turn your liability into an asset. I know military and intel contractors value domain experience much more than do startups. Sell yourself as a principal scientist with "the right stuff". Large corporations buy into that.