Quora: What should I do to get into Google’s DeepMind team?

Question

What should I do to get into Google’s DeepMind team?

Answer by Jeong

Another path that might not be so obvious is: winning Kaggle competitions.

There are at least 2 DeepMind employees attributing their successful career development to Kaggle – One (Jeffrey) even without an advanced degree!

1. Jeffrey De Fauw – From Kaggle to Google DeepMind: An interview with Jeffrey De Fauw

Has competing on Kaggle influenced your career? If so, how?

I’m sure it was quite essential. I used Kaggle competitions as some of my projects to showcase my skills to potential employers and I think it’s perfect for that. Of course there are nuances, but it gives you a practical problem companies are interested in, an objective way to compare yourself against other competitors and generally you have a lot of freedom in terms of designing the resulting algorithm.

1. Sander Dieleman – From Kaggle to Google DeepMind: An interview with Sander Dieleman

Has competing on Kaggle influenced your career? If so, how?

I think it has been instrumental. Doing well in a few competitions (and, I think more importantly, writing blog posts about my solutions) has allowed me to make a name for myself. In fact, I received an invitation to visit DeepMind after giving a presentation at a meetup in London about some of my work on Kaggle, and that’s how I ended up working there.