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.
comments
It's also the answer to network problems. Fault tolerance is also difficult to achieve across all systems.
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!
FYI - I am a data scientist, PhD+MS, reasonably versed in stats and can write decent code in Python, have a good knowledge of data structures, some familiarity with algorithms, but I’d totally fail a SWE interview. Even medium LC problems pose a challenge to me.