Vlad Feinberg posts advice on landing roles at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic
Vlad Feinberg posted advice on securing positions at frontier AI labs. The guidance draws from an April lecture revisiting prior ML research forecasts. It highlights that elite students with top conference papers, math and programming wins, and existing connections now target OpenAI, Anthropic, and GDM rather than finance firms such as Jane Street and Citadel. The recommended path emphasizes proof-based coursework, intensive coding on known tasks, and weekend research builds. Kevin Kwok reposted the advice, and research engineer samsja added that entry often requires extra personal hours and faces extra barriers outside the United States.
#1262samsja@SAMSJA19@_aidan_clark_ I agree that it's hard to endorse, but it's also a reality that breaking in frontier research might require a lot of free time sacrifice. Especially for people outside of the usa where getting a job that is remotely related to advanced products or research is basically impossible
Aidan Clark@_aidan_clark_The core advice of "get good at an in-demand skill which is new enough not everyone will know it" is great -- it's what I did inadvertently (knowing Tensorflow) -- but I cannot for the life of me endorse "give up all your weekends and become a work machine".
