Interview with a Databricks Head of Applied AI: Industry Trends, How to Move Ahead, and Keeping Sane

Stefan interviews Ritendra Datta who is the head of applied AI at Databricks and formerly Meta eng director and Google senior staff engineer, about the evolution of the industry, how to be effective, and how to position yourself for the future.
Follow Ritendra on LinkedIn: / ritendradatta
Got ideas for who you want to see us talk to next? Drop it in the comments.
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[@ShreyasGaneshs]

I think we will see and we are already starting to see more of a focus on system design interviews over leetcode style questions as the expectations of engineers shift away from pure coding speed and skills toward understanding the systems they use

[@hello_interview]

Good insight!

[@leizhao2106]

I believe coding still serves as a foundation for engineering roles. As mentioned in this interview, the more complex aspects of coding still require human intuition and problem-solving skills.

[@ShreyasGaneshs]

@@leizhao2106 definitely don’t think it’s goin anywhere completely but there’s gonna be shift for sure especially since design interviews can be way more open ended and in depth

[@hello_interview]

@@ShreyasGaneshs Even coding interviews are shifting a bit, away from the leetcode grind and more into tradeoff-laden design questions. I expect this to continue to play out over the coming years.

[@3rdWorld2LibertySpeedrun]

@@hello_interview Really? Whenever I see what kind of questions FAANG and top companies are asking it seems more leetcode-ish than ever.

[@joo02]

Appreciate the new perspective. Although I dont agree that we are quite there yet with AI lifting dev works enough to push engineers to be RTO 4-5 days a week, leadership higher ups could have views vastly different than the rest. Not saying it’s wrong or bad, and perhaps it truly is the best for the business and there may be data proving that. All I know is that it remain mystery for most of us

[@ShreyasGaneshs]

Appreciate these interviews always great to get perspective from people in places that u want to get to

[@thedankest1974]

Insightful, thanks for sharing 👍

[@cnkumar20]

quality content.

[@shubhamdhapola5447]

This discussion had high signal-to-noise ratio & was very grounded in advices pertaining to the reality out there.
My perspective is that performing well at the job and being highly sought out rests with the individual's ability to act somewhat like an RL agent.
There's a closed loop between my "actions" & "rewards" I receive in exchange, how it influences the future "states" I find myself in & how I update my "policy" to maximize the expected "value" over the long run, aka my career.
Exploitation vs exploration trade-off between what I know vs what I should learn to handle all aspects of the job at hand.

[@hello_interview]

RL is a good analogy for career because it puts a lot of emphasis on reward function, feedback loops, and iteration speed.
Most people aren't thinking much about the mismatch between their true reward and the signals they're getting from their environment!