Andrew: Cool. Hey, everybody. Let’s get started with another episode of the Unblocking Podcast. Today we have Karthik. Karthik, do you just want to tell me a little bit about your situation, what you’re feeling stuck on in your career, and then we can go from there?
Karthik: Yeah, my name is Karthik. I’m currently working at PNC bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am stuck between deciding to go back to school and try to progress my career. I’ve been doing some research in the machine learning AI space, especially with mechanistic interpretability. It’s pretty much knowing the internals of AI models. And I’ve been interviewing since March and I’ve been trying to change jobs and stuff. I have not had much luck. And so my confidence has gone down. So yeah, that’s where I am right now. I think that’s the reason why I tried to reach out to you. So yeah, that’s about me.
Andrew: Great. I’m just going to ask you a bunch of questions. None of them are leading or targeted. I’m just trying to get a model of the situation. So where did you work before you worked at this bank?
Karthik: I graduated from college so I’ve been with them for close to three years now. Penn State. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science and math from Penn State.
Andrew: And what were your grades?
Karthik: I think I got 3.4 out of 4 GPA.
Andrew: Okay, and in both computer science and math you did a double major? Okay, and then you went straight to work at this bank from graduation?
Karthik: I mean I did an internship in college so after that yes I work as a software engineer pretty much on a client facing team.
Andrew: Yeah. What’s your role now at the bank?
Karthik: Software engineer pretty much on a client facing team.
Andrew: Yeah, and how much do you make as a software engineer there?
Karthik: $50,000 a year.
Andrew: Okay, and where are you trying to apply?
Karthik: I’ve been applying, in terms of what kind of roles or what kind of job portals? Okay. I’m not targeting any companies. I think I used to target companies, but now since I’ve been getting rejected from, I think I’ve done Amazon, I’ve done Google, applied to the big tech, but due to...
Andrew: So you’ve been going to Big Tech for software engineering specifically? OK.
Karthik: Yes, I’ve wanted to, due to some visa restrictions, I cannot work for Meta or Amazon doesn’t, I think Amazon does, but I think their process is sometimes a little slow and so I’m on a student visa. To work in the future, I would require sponsorship. So yeah, that’s...
Andrew: What’s the visa restriction?
Karthik: Like Meta, they don’t take people in unless they have at least 24 months of work validity, visa validity before they’re taken. But when I started applying, I had less than that. Yes. Yeah, I can, but it’s just if I want to transition, that’s the challenge because of the limited time I have.
Andrew: So right now you’re working at this bank as a software engineer on a student visa. Okay. Yeah.
Karthik: On my visa, it becomes like now, I don’t know how familiar you are with the whole work visa situation. It’s just a lottery where your employer puts your name in and if your name gets picked, they can apply for a work visa. So my employer has done that twice. I didn’t get selected. So I have one more chance before I go either decide to go back home or stay here and go back to school so that’s where I am. What month is it? August? So I have like 10 months, 10 more months yes.
Andrew: How much runway do you have? You have 10 months of runway. And then what are your primary expenses?
Karthik: Rent, food and education loans.
Andrew: And loans, yeah, and you’re still paying off your student loans now. Do you know what the interest rate is?
Karthik: I’m not sure. I have a loan back home and I think my parents know it better than I do. So I’m not sure.
Andrew: Might just be worth looking into that also. Anyway, that’s more on the finance side, less on the career side, but still. So you have 10 months of runway, but then also you have to be working somewhere because you have a visa, and you can only work at your current employer for one more year. Because, yeah.
Karthik: Yeah. And then if my visa gets selected, I think I get like six more years before they apply for my green card or permanent residency.
Andrew: Do you have other visa options available to you like an O1 or?
Karthik: Yeah, I do, but I don’t think my profile is good enough for those, especially with how competitive they can get. And I think with how USCIS has become more stricter to the criteria they have. So I’ve talked to an immigration lawyer before and they said I don’t have a good chance of my case getting approved.
Andrew: Yeah, one thing to do is to work toward that. Like that’s kind of fascinating. Another thought is you currently have... It seems like the visa thing is at the core of this, right? It’s like you can only apply to companies that can sponsor your visa. And a lot of companies don’t want to do that. Is that your impression right now?
Karthik: Yeah, from what I’ve heard, even with the contractors or the people that reach out to me, it’s like they don’t want to do that or their clients don’t want to do that. So we get to a stage where they’re like, oh, everything’s great. What’s your visa status? And then they don’t respond back. So that’s what I’ve been seeing for three to four months now.
Andrew: Right. This is tough. It’s tough partially because your situation is decent, but not great, not as good as you want it to be. And then making it better is like, there’s a lot of different available paths, but they’re kind of somewhat blocked on other forces. Like, let me take a different approach here. How happy are you with how you spend your time on a day to day basis?
Karthik: In what criteria? Yeah yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, like I just want to move away from the stuff that we can’t control and move into a domain of stuff that we can control for a second. And I can maybe give some advice about the stuff that we can’t control later, but let’s just move on and say like, okay, the career stuff is hard. And so we’re going to start working on a little bit of easier things that are easier to move. And then maybe that can build momentum. But how happy are you? I’m interested in your day. Like how do you spend your days right now? And how happy are you with how you spend your time?
Karthik: Whatever free time I have, I use it to apply to jobs and work out. I like to run. So I do a bit of running every week and on the weekends I hang out with my friends. So that’s it. It’s pretty decent.
Andrew: How could it be better?
Karthik: I’m not sure if... I think it’s just the looming situation which takes so much of my mental energy, clouds so much of my mental energy that I think that’s the one thing that would, for it to disappear so that I think I would be significantly happier.
Andrew: Yeah, how much time do you spend thinking about it?
Karthik: I’d say a decent amount because the idea of going back to school is also there because I would like to stay here. So that’s where I am stuck. So I do think about it quite a lot.
Andrew: If you went back to school, what would you study?
Karthik: I’m interested in studying further about distributed systems and machine learning because I have a math major. I think I would like to study more about advanced courses on machine learning. And I never got a chance to do distributed systems coursework in school. So those are the two, I think I would build my coursework around those two subjects.
Andrew: And then after you went back to school, how much more time would you have on your visa from there?
Karthik: It’d be another three years.
Andrew: So basically, every time you go back for a degree, you get another three years on a student visa.
Karthik: No, not always, but since I have a bachelor’s degree, I’m going for an advanced degree, I get it. But let’s say I go for a PhD since I’ve used it twice. You can only use it two times in your lifetime. I’m not sure. I have to double check, but if I go get a master’s degree, use three years of my work eligibility and go back for a PhD, I would only have one year, not the three years.
Andrew: If you stopped working, how much time would you have before you have to leave? You have to leave pretty quickly, right?
Karthik: Yeah, like I have 60 days.
Andrew: So one thing that I just want to point out is you have 10 months of cash runway, but you only have 60 days left in the country once this time limit runs out and you’re making money right now. You are making money right now. So you’re saving actively. So that implies that you should be willing to spend money to solve the problem. So one question I have is, and again, the reason is just a mismatch there. So it’s like you have two months that you’re allowed to stay in the country, but you have 10 months of savings. So that means basically you have eight months of savings that you could afford to spend if it would significantly improve your visa situation or your immigration situation. That doesn’t mean, you know, we don’t like spending our money, but also just, you know, if the situation is urgent, then what else is money for? So one thing that’s worth noting is just how could you spend more money to improve your immigration situation? Is there any way that you can think of?
Karthik: Well I don’t have that much capital to improve it for good. There’s investor visas. No, no you mean immigration lawyers, well...
Andrew: Is that true? Like you’ve worked with the best immigration lawyers that exist in the country? I just mean any way, any way at all that you could spend money to improve the immigration situation.
Karthik: Well, I don’t have... There’s an investor visa that I could do. Yeah, well, that’s the reason why yeah. You mean okay...
Andrew: No, no, that’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean. It’s like, okay, literally just hire better immigration lawyers, right? Like would that not just solve your problem? Just hire better immigration lawyers and then ask them what you need to do. Like maybe they’re going to tell you like, hey, you actually need to make a bunch of research papers. So then you need to hire an AI researcher to coach you, right? So you’re going to get an AI research tutor. You’re going to spend 40 hours a week on top of your job studying AI research under that person’s tutelage. And then you’re going to publish some papers and then they’re going to help make sure that your papers get cited. And then all of these things are available to you.
So there’s nothing fundamentally about the universe, the way the universe is shaped such that you can’t pursue every available path. You can of course do the standard paths. Like you could just go back to school. I mean, that’s relatively simple and straightforward. It’s not a bad idea, frankly. So, you know, I don’t see why not. Like maybe you just position yourself such that you can go to a really good program, like the ideal program that you really want. And so you can instead hire a tutor or hire a coach to help you get into the perfect program. What would be the best possible program that you could get into if you went back to school?
Karthik: I would want to go to UC Berkeley. I would be like... Yeah.
Andrew: Okay, so you could go to UC Berkeley’s AI program, let’s say. So probably there are ways to get into UC Berkeley’s AI program that are systematic. And there are some people who know how to do that that you can find on the internet. And those people you could reach out to and be like, hey, I would really like to be your client. Or I would really like to spend an hour interviewing you and asking if you’re willing to just help me make some progress on this goal of mine. Do you write a blog on the internet at all?
Karthik: Not really.
Andrew: Do you have a... Yeah, basically the other thing that would help is the internet is, it’s basically access to infinite wealth. Because you have access to everyone, you’re literally just directly connected to everyone on earth. But you can only access the wealth if people can trust you. So it’s the same way that, it’s the same way that you’re only allowed to get a job if you have credentials. The same thing is true on the internet. It’s like for in a lot of cases, you will only be able to receive help from certain people if you have not credentials in the traditional sense, because the internet doesn’t really care about those. It’s more like if you have content that people can read that show that you’re earnest, that you’re kindhearted, considerate, ambitious, mindful, you know, whatever virtues that you have, you should try your best to display those virtues and values on the internet, in your internet profiles, on a blog, on your social media, really everywhere that you are. And the more you add value to other people’s lives in that way, and the more you demonstrate your own values and declare them, the more people who share your values are going to want to help you succeed. I think, and again, part of the reason for this level of advice, this is relatively high strategic advice, it’s not a simple tactical thing, is your situation isn’t that bad such that you need to freak out. And so I wonder if one of the ways to resolve the emotions that are kind of crippling you is to get into a frame that’s like, no matter what happens here, I’m on the winning side, as long as I invest the right way, as long as I’m strategic with my time and with my resources and with my attention. That doesn’t necessarily mean stop applying to jobs, but it also might.
So for instance, with respect to jobs, none of my students ever get their jobs through applications. Like I’ve never had a single student get a job through an application, ever. Every single one of my students got their jobs by texting people, DMing people, getting a warm introduction, meeting people in person, or finding people on the internet through their social media accounts. I had one student get multiple offers who, he was not a particularly strong engineer. He was compared to a lot of my students, a relatively weaker engineer, but he got the best offer, the best job offer in his cohort because he just had a really, really good reply game on Twitter. And he would just DM people and be like, hey, can I work with you? Can I work with you? Can I work with you? Not in an annoying way. Not like, hey, please, please hire me or something. More just genuinely earnestly without a desire for the person to say yes, just wondering. Like, hey, could you use any help? I would love to work with you. No hard feelings if you say no, it doesn’t bother me at all. That sort of attitude is often rewarded. And so he was rewarded a lot for that and just got a really, really good offer. Is there anything there? I kind of listed a camp of ideas or a complex of ideas. Is there anything there that you want to double click on that might be interesting to you?
Karthik: I think blogging sounds interesting because I think I’ve been told in the past to write blogs to show my interests because I think it’s an investment in you that might not pay off now but someone might read something that they’re looking for and that could just help you so I think that’s something that resonates with me and also investing in a mentor I think that’s something I’ll look into so...
Andrew: Yeah, I’m gonna DM you on Twitter a few essays that were really life-changing for me about how writing on the internet can change your life in some good ways.
[Andrew searches for and sends essays]
Andrew: Okay, I sent you a few different things. I don’t have too much longer that I can chat on this call. I’m sorry that that was just kind of the shallow surface level stuff, but my instinct is you’re smart and conscientious. And one of the ways in which you are failing to live up to your potential is just that people don’t know about you. Nobody knows about you. You’re just a guy. Who is a stranger. When you message me, I don’t even see a twitter profile picture.
Karthik: I think so. I used to but I don’t know if I got rid of it.
Andrew: Yeah, you have no profile picture and you’re not followed by anyone that I follow and you mostly just retweet things. So it’s like, not therefore do a bunch more Twitter stuff, but just become somebody and decide who you want to be. Decide who you want to be by looking up your heroes. How did they live their life? Who did they correspond with? What sorts of things did they write? Go find their writings and read their writings and be like, wow, what caused them to write all this down so that other people could read it? Especially their early career stuff because you’re early in your career. You really want to look at your heroes and be like, what were they doing early in their career at the beginning? And how did they get their start rather than looking at them at the end? Because you’re nothing like them at the end. You’re at the beginning. And then yeah, and just become somebody and really set yourself up to become some public person. It doesn’t need to be your whole self that’s public. You can pick some part of yourself. Or you can be your whole self in public. Like I tend to be more of my whole self on average, although everyone plays a bit of a character. And then it’s not gonna be all at once and it’s not gonna be perfect. And the point of it is to do it a lot. So do 100 things is a common expression around here. I should also give you the guide to Teapot. Christine’s guide to Teapot.
[Andrew sends more resources]
Andrew: Okay. I will send this to you as well on Twitter. So I’ve sent you a bunch of stuff to read. The reason I’ve sent all this stuff to read is just these are the people who I follow on the internet who really value writing and finding other people. And if you follow them and reply to them, not in a needy way, again, it’s not about neediness. I don’t even think you have very much neediness in a sense. Yes, you have this urgency, but also you have a pretty good option available to you, which is to go back to school. And you’re going to develop a lot more options over the next few years of your life, which you seem to have available to you, at least a few years, even if it’s not perfect. You’re going to develop a huge amount of options if you pick a strategy, pick a set of values and just keep driving toward those values. Those are also some of the things that are going to make you more available for an O1 for what it’s worth. It’s like you’re going to become more of a public figure this way. And that could be beneficial for you down the line, that might be a good visa option, but it’s not really about that as much as it’s about the actual benefits of being a public figure and having people listening to you or just paying attention and being your collaborators, I guess is really the right way to think about it. Not listening, but befriending.
And in terms of should you keep applying or should you go to school? I think I just don’t have enough context to say right away. I think both of those are potentially good options. But if you are trying to get a job somewhere, just note that the way that is easiest to do that is to kind of directly pitch people on the value you can deliver to them. Not in a way that’s icky and like sales, but in a way that’s just matter of fact. It’s like, hey, factually, there is just this value that I can deliver to your company. Would you like that? Are you interested in that? Not because you should hire me just because see the value that I can deliver and I’m just curious to know. And I just wanted you to know about it, but really no pressure. You don’t have to hire me. We don’t have to work together or whatever. I’m just, I’m over here, I’m really valuable and I’m working for this bank. I could be doing way more work and I could be doing it for you or we could be doing it together or whatever. Having that sort of attitude of going out into the world and finding your opportunities and making them for yourself I think will lead to really, really big benefits.
Karthik: Yeah, that makes sense.
Andrew: If you have any questions about that or you have any thoughts on any of the essays that I’ve sent you, feel free to DM me and we can chat from there. Okay, peace, dude. Bye.
Karthik: Yeah. Thank you.
