The barriers to AI engineering are crumbling fast

Is anyone instantly suspicious when they introduce themselves these days an "AI Developer"

> Is anyone instantly suspicious when they introduce themselves these days an "AI Developer"

I'm only suspicious if they don't simultaneously and eagerly show me their Github so that I can see what they've accomplished.

Of the great developers I have worked with in real life, across a large number of projects and workplaces, very few have any Github presence. Most don't even have LinkedIn. They usually don't have any online presence at all: No blog with regular updates. No Twitter presence full of hot takes.

Sometimes this industry is a lot like the "finance" industry: People struggling for credibility talk about it constantly, everywhere. They flex and bloviate and look for surrogates for accomplishments wherever they can be found. Peacocking on github, writing yet another tutorial on what tokens are and how embeddings work, etc.

That obviously doesn't mean in all cases, and there are loads of stellar talents that have a strong online presence. But by itself it is close to meaningless, and my experience is that it is usually a negative indicator.

> It's really not that difficult to show what you've accomplished if you claim to be in a field.

Actually it is incredibly difficult, because you no longer have access to your previous employers' code bases and even if you do, it is illegal for you to show it to anyone.

> Actually it is incredibly difficult, because you no longer have access to your previous employers' code bases.

So the person never does anything outside of his employer's IP? That's unfortunate, but as a heuristic, I'd like to see stuff that the person has done if they claim to be in a field.

Perhaps other people don't care, and will be convinced by expertise without evidence, but I'm busy, and my life is hard enough already: show me your code or gtfo. :-)

It takes a special someone to work 40-50 hrs per week, writing hard creative software, then go home and write hard creative software in a different domain, while also balancing family/life.

Also, unless you are in CA many companies have extensive IP assignment clauses, which makes moonlighting on other projects potentially questionable.(especially if they are assholes)

My previous job made it hard to even submit bugs/fixes to open source projects we used internally. Often we just forked b/c bureaucracy (there's a reason it was my previous job)

Not saying your wrong, seeing someone's code is nice. As long as you are aware that you are leaving alot on the table by excluding those that do not have a presence. (Particularly older with kids)