Preface
This post has no useful content, just complaints and rambling.
I’ve been organizing technical sharing sessions at my company for a while, hoping to share knowledge and help everyone improve. Last Thursday, I gave a machine learning class to several colleagues. The topic had been set two weeks earlier, and I spent four or five days preparing it. I tried to make it as accessible as possible so that it would spark their interest and help them get started. It did not go as smoothly as I had imagined, and I was reminded how much work sits behind anything that appears routine.
At my previous company, technical sharing was routine. People participated willingly, paid attention during sessions, and wanted to improve. This time I encountered a great deal of reluctance: people played on their phones or pretended to sleep. What a fucking mess.
Content
[Cost]:
5 days - 2 full days, plus 3 hours per day for 3 days.
Two datasets:
- Mnist
- SMS
Three algorithms:
- KNN
- SVM
- Naive Bayes
Two implementations:
- Scikit-Learn
- Tensorflow
Other stuff
- Registered a domain name
- Deployed a chat room for pre/post discussion
- Deployed Jupyter for them to use and run online examples
- Printed materials, provided 4 days in advance.
I prepared two examples: mnist handwritten digit recognition and SMS spam text classification. Used the simplest algorithms: KNN/SVM (Mnist), NaiveBayes (SMS text), and implemented both tensorflow and scikit-learn versions. Mainly taught two algorithms: KNN and Bayes.
[Gains]:
- Deepened my understanding of these concepts and algorithms. Teaching others really does improve your own understanding.
- I probably offended a few people, but I do not care. If we were at the same level of understanding, this would not have happened.
- I made the longest slide deck I have produced since college and realized how shallow and foolish I am.
- To achieve anything great, I need to work harder, harder, and harder.
Postscript:
After the session, we discussed this whole tech sharing thing. In the end:
“When you see the wise, think of emulating them; when you see the unwise, reflect on yourself.”
Do you have no self-awareness at all? Can you not try to improve?
Everyone’s level is really uneven (a colleague said considering everyone’s different levels)
I am not mocking anyone in particular; everyone here is garbage.
If boasting were useful, your skills would be far above mine.
PS: Suddenly realized there’s ambiguity above. The first-level quotes are asking: can this be understood this way? Just adding some funny text memes. Not mocking anyone. Mocking someone would be pointless. Just for self-reflection. (update 09.20)
The next morning, the boss said: the result wasn’t good, feels like everyone didn’t get started.
Do I have to spoon-feed you? You did not prepare anything, and you did not listen during the session. How can you expect to get started? This is not something you can grasp in a single class; I have been learning it for a long time and still would not claim to have gotten started.
I gave the slides to a younger classmate, and he could tell they were introductory material. Was my explanation not simple enough, or is my younger classmate simply too smart?
In the previous two sessions, discussions of exceptions and error handling turned into two and a half hours of bullshit and wandered everywhere.I really do not understand why some people know nothing yet do not want to improve themselves or learn what they do not know.
What use is merely wanting to improve? A teacher at Haizhi told me this, and I keep it in mind.
- Looking back, the people in our lab were quite dedicated.
Cheers to freedom.