"My hobby is my work," says Roman Panarin, ML engineer, about his lifestyle

Roma Panarin, city — Barnaul, senior machine learning engineer at Mad Devs, @panarinrn

About me

I am a specialist in computer vision, data analysis, and machine learning. I have six years of experience in this field, and I have spent two years studying NLP. Currently, I hold the position of lead machine learning engineer at Mad Devs and lead projects focused on controlled text generation and search systems for pattern trading.

I also work as a lecturer at two universities — in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. I combine lectures with my main job at the company.

My workday starts at 09:00 and always ends at different times. We have clients from the USA, and sometimes joint calls happen late due to different time zones.

On weekends, I try not to work, but this doesn't always work out. Because it so happened that my hobby is my job. And I am lucky in this. There is no such thing as sitting from 09:00 to 18:00, looking at the clock out of boredom. I like solving complex problems, which is why I love my job.

Where and how I learn

I am always learning. I chose a field where things are constantly changing and updating. You have to always keep up with the times. Therefore, I engage in self-education daily — I read articles, study business cases. I like to follow several Telegram channels where scientific articles are reviewed, highlighting the essence in a brief summary, through which I can then understand whether it is worth delving deeper into the article. I update global knowledge once a quarter or once every six months.

For example, at the moment, I am actively developing my soft skills. I understand that I need such managerial skills as communication and others. It is not as simple as it may seem. In mathematics, which I am used to working with, everything is clear: there are laws, mechanisms, logic. But with people, everything is different. You have to rebuild yourself and change your perception. Even if you go through a psychology training where the theory is explained, in practice, everything may not go as expected.

I also sometimes attend conferences — as a speaker or an attendee. This also helps in improving knowledge. But before going to a conference, I advise doing a background check on the speakers. I believe that the presence of academic degrees, publications, and successful cases in real business among speakers guarantees that you will not waste your time.

I recommend several sources for study. Books:
— "Deep Learning", Courville A., Bengio Y., and Goodfellow I.
— "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning", Bishop C.
— "Deep Learning", Nikolenko Sergey, Kadurin A., Arkhangelskaya E.

Telegram channels: Abstract DL, "AI News", "gonzo-ML article reviews".

Environment

I am selective in communication. Everyone around me is people with a broad outlook. Mostly — IT specialists. But in fact, in an informal setting, we do not talk about work. And if you look at them from the outside, you would never say that these are IT specialists.

These are also people in creative professions, and recently — entrepreneurs and startup founders. They develop their business and every three to four months ask me to test their product, probably due to the specifics of my activity. As a result, I become their guinea pig. But it is interesting. You never know which project will eventually succeed. Perhaps, I will contribute to someone's future success.

Where I spend my free time

If I am not working, I spend my free time in the gym. I go to workouts three times a week. And this is already a necessity, as I have a sedentary lifestyle.

In general, in my free time, I try to engage in activities: I walk with dogs, go to parks, ski in winter, fix the car, or go to my parents' dacha. It helps to clear your head when chopping wood with an axe.

I also like hiking in the mountains. My dream is to visit the Putorana Plateau. This is an incredible place, but it is an expensive pleasure. There are no established roads there, you can get there, most likely, by helicopter or on air cushions. Someday I will save up and go there.

And I like to travel. But I have my own peculiarity. I do not like to travel for the sake of a stamp in the passport. I like to live in a country, study the lifestyle, integrate into society. For example, if a country has a popular dish called lagman, I will look for all the places where it is cooked deliciously. I will try how it is cooked by Dungans, Uyghurs, in different regions of the country. Such a comprehensive approach. I also think that before going far, far away, you need to study everything around you. Therefore, I have not been in a large number of countries.

Where, what to buy

I am generally not a tech geek. I prefer Apple products. I am satisfied with what they do with their devices. I like the integration between headphones, watches, and laptops. They provide good performance, long battery life, and a high-quality Retina screen. For my work, this is enough. In fact, I spend most of my resources on cloud services and video cards for training models.