Alisa Liu is wrapping up her final-year PhD at the University of Washington and starting at OpenAI next week, where she researched NLP, language models, tokenization, data synthesis, and alignment under advisors Yejin Choi and Noah Smith. Alongside the move she posted a detailed timeline of applying to research roles at eleven companies, complete with the emotional and logistical realities of the process.
I'm joining OpenAI next week!🥹 The job search turned out to be really challenging but also super rewarding, so I wrote a small blog to share what I learned along the way and hopefully make the process a little less mysterious for the next person. https://alisawuffles.github.io/blog/job-search
The self-reported tally includes 57 interviews, 46 recruiter calls, and 16 post-offer chats that mixed PyTorch coding, LeetCode-style problems, technical deep-dives, research talks, behavioral questions, math, and job talks, with technical skills weighed more than raw research output once interviews began.
Liu highlights stamina management, offer timing and negotiation, building personal LLM and math notes, plus watching Stanford CS336 lectures and re-implementing transformers from scratch, all aimed at cutting uncertainty for others chasing similar AI research positions.
Many users congratulated Alisa Liu on joining OpenAI, celebrating her new role after she publicly shared job search insights.
No Digg Deeper questions have been answered for this story yet.
@alisawuffles Awesome! Congratulations! 🍾🙏🏼
@alisawuffles this is gold
@alisawuffles @JulieKallini Congrats!!!
I'm joining OpenAI next week!🥹 The job search turned out to be really challenging but also super rewarding, so I wrote a small blog to share what I learned along the way and hopefully make the process a little less mysterious for the next person. https://alisawuffles.github.io/blog/job-search
@alisawuffles Congrats, welcome to the team! 🫶
@alisawuffles Congratulations!
@alisawuffles @MohitIyyer Welcome Alisa!! Congrats 🎈
I'm joining OpenAI next week!🥹 The job search turned out to be really challenging but also super rewarding, so I wrote a small blog to share what I learned along the way and hopefully make the process a little less mysterious for the next person. https://alisawuffles.github.io/blog/job-search
@alisawuffles Great news congratulations
@alisawuffles congrats!
@alisawuffles Alisa congrats. Im in the market with no luck yet but hopefully we'll be co workers soon . God bless !
@alisawuffles Congratulations!
@alisawuffles Congrats!!!!
@alisawuffles congrats!!
@alisawuffles The blog was a delightful read. Thanks and congratulations!
@alisawuffles @ChengleiSi Congrats, Alisa!
@alisawuffles GG
@alisawuffles Congrats Alisa!!
@alisawuffles Congrats! Well written and really helpful!
@alisawuffles big congrats, Alisa! 🥳
@alisawuffles Congrats. The post is thorough and insightful . Thank you for sharing. 🎉🎉
@alisawuffles Congrats!!!
