Is data science at Cisco interesting?
I am considering an offer at Cisco for data science analyst as a masters new grad. The offer is pretty good, but my main concern is the work, which sounds a bit boring. I am more of a deep learning person / computer vision, and so a machine learning engineer role is more up my alley. I am guessing data scientist (analyst level) is more like analytics and lots SQL type things at Cisco. For anyone in data science at Cisco, can you speak to how interesting the work is? Is it more analytics, or can you be more like a machine learning engineer if you wanted to? My potential manager was claiming that they would allow me to pursue my interests, whether that is more machine learning engineer type of role, or algorithms design, or even pursue creative new ideas with an openness to computer vision if there’s a business case (in my mind, probably not). Not sure if I believe that.
Would you happen to know anything about the customer experience team?
Data science is all about identifying problems and problem framing. Do you know enough about the team? If yes, then you should be able to lead and implement solutions to their problems. However you should also ask if ML is core to the org or a side project.
Who is your hiring manager? It’s really dependent, to be honest. CX is hiring like crazy, but some teams are not good at all — like can’t even write SQL correctly or understand how to use basic Git commands. I know there are some really talented DS folks in Marketing, but I haven’t spoken to them. It is team dependent, but the tech stack is pretty good (massive on-prem Hadoop cluster, GCP on the way, AWS, Snowflake) and you have a lot of freedom for problem solving, which is always nice.
For anyone interested in ML, why wouldn't you not work at FANGish companies instead of Cisco?
No, Cisco data is terrible. It will make your life miserable but you’ll learn how to ‘deal with ambiguity’
STAY away from big companies. Even GOOG and FB does not have many worthy data roles unless you are in a research oriented team. Good startups who depend on ML for their survival are your best bet.
You mean mid sized companies?
I’m a data science analyst under CX, feel free to dm me but I would avoid Cisco at all costs.
Talk to the hiring manager and get more clarity on what are the things they are looking at to apply AI/ML. What problems they are trying to solve. Observe if there is clarity in their thought process. If work sounds interesting, join the team otherwise skip. Also ask to talk to the team.
Who is the hiring manager?
Depends on which team at Cisco... I think datadog 🐕 is better ..