Our guest today is Damien Benveniste, CTO at Motivee and Ex Tech Lead at Meta.

In our conversation, Damien first explains how he transitioned from a PhD in Physics to the world of AI and talks about the differences between machine learning in industry and doing a PhD. He also shares his experience getting laid off three times in a row and gives advice on how to do well in industry, how to choose the right company to work for and how to keep moving forward. 

We then discuss Machine learning for ads ranking and talk about deep learning architecture optimisation. Damien explains how he made Meta earn millions of dollars by improving the performance of machine learning models.

We finally talk about Motivee, a tech startup developing a smart decision insight tool powered by employee listening. We dig into some of the challenges when building a startup like the need to satisfy clients while keeping investors happy. Damien finally shares advice on how to progress in your career.

If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a 5 star review and subscribe to the AI Stories Youtube channel.

Follow Damien on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damienbenveniste/
Follow Neil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leiserneil/

--

(00:00) : Intro

(02:10) : How did Damien get into the field ? 

(07:28) : Why AI ?  

(13:51) : ML in industry vs PhD

(32:46) : Choosing the right company to work for

(38:36) : Getting laid off

(52:30) : Machine learning for ads ranking at Meta

(1:09:21) : $$ value of deep learning algorithms optimisation

(1:20:26) : ML at Meta vs ML in Startups

(1:26:03) : Founding a tech Startup (Motivee)

(1:47:28) : One advice to progress in your career