I was assigned to work on machine learning three years ago. Literally an overnight "the project changed, you're doing this now, here's the project update memo f

I was assigned to work on machine learning three years ago. Literally an overnight "the project changed, you're doing this now, here's the project update memo for your contract." Your post exactly describes ML on the internet: first you find a billion "check out my intro to ML" Medium articles and git repos that spin up OpenCV on Tensorflow ("small bench"), then you move to the Tensorflow docs ("build a house"), then you move to Arxiv.org ("theories of city planning"). Once you step into that middle zone, you're basically stuck reading academic texts. As a 50-something engineer, it was a kick in the balls getting started with this stuff. Fortunately this contract is related to hardware optimization, which I've been doing for decades, but this particular variant of it was a curve-ball. It is an interesting back-and-forth: I find myself exchanging information with lots of new-college-grads (permanent hires, not contractors) that all have sharply coiffed beards and heavy denim jeans. Two of them are pretentious and fight to be top dog (which is hilarious from my old, jaded POV), but the rest are genuinely good kids that want to learn, and vice versa, teach me what they know. It's fun. I'll miss 'em when my contract ends.