I'm working as a software engineer for almost 3-4 years now. I've been working with data and like the data engineering part - transforming data in Storm, Spark, etc.. I feel the growth is very limited though. Both internally and externally. Firstly, there's little I can do about the quality of work that we get to do and opportunities for me to learn and upgrade my skills. Moreover, I find it's very often about the no of years of experience you have and the people whom you might know, than about your talent or abilities. It's about being in the right place with the right people, more than about knowing the right thing to do. Also, I don't like going on call over the weekends at all. So, I'm wondering if is should quit my job and focus on learning something more valuable, like data science, which I imagine, would be higher paying, not require weekend on call and more rewarding for my career overall. Any thoughts or suggestions? I'm not that microservice/service/full stack/core Java/dependency injection guy and I don't want to be.
You imagine DS would be higher paying than SW? What universe do you live in? 😂
I’m a hybrid SWE+DS type. First, don’t use the phrase DS. It means a lot of different things to different people. My ideal definition is someone who is strong at SWE, stats/ML/math, and has domain knowledge so that they can analyze complex data sets and produce high level insights. However, most people interpret it as someone who can do basic model fitting in python or R and knows what a histogram is. Second, based on what you described as your interest, being a SWE is probably the best role for you, but you also need to find a job that enables you to grow in the more analytical direction. There are a ton of opportunities out there for people with hybrid SWE+DS skills right now. Most of them are labeled as ML roles. Two Sigma has need for people like this, but so do a lot of other places. Having Storm and Spark experience will help you get an interview, but you’ll probably also need to be solid at leetcode to pass the SWE interviews. Good luck!
Thanks. I'll check out the opportunities.
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SWE > Data Scientist? Still I guess, data science allows you to move into leadership or decision making roles because you know how to use data, more than SWE and that pays the highest?
Data scientists influence decisions, they are not decision makers. Your typical data scientist spends most of their time doing SQL gymnastics and creating dashboards. It ain’t as sexy as you’re imagining it to be.