Software Engineering vs Data Science/Data Analytics
Hello, I have about 2 years of software Engineering experience (Accenture) and about 9 months of Data Science (includes Data Engineering work preparing data for prediction) with a very small company in Dallas . I am trying to evaluate career options. For SDEs I could say two to three years in various levels (Junior ,mid ,senior ) and then tech architect or tech manager which could span for at least 15 years or so or may be 20(SE Junior to retiring as CTO or comparable role ) But if I look at DS, what would be the career progression? Also businesses in this planet need digitalization and it's maintanence making SE indispensable or less dispensable but DS is needed only for few businesses and not everyone needs it as a on going department for the business. From my personal experience of corporate restructuring, they closed DS but the SE was indispensable as the small company was facing downgrade in revenue. Barring top 10% of companies who can afford continuous DS projects , I feel rest of the firm's need SE more than DS. What do you all think ?
Yeah ML Engineer is more indispensable than a week Data Scientist still if you ignore the title , the type of work being done is probably needed when there is some money and need to find ways to augment it or it's doing bad and need some help to identify etc.I am unable to find it as ongoing need for most of the businesses. Even a business analyst is more important to bridge the gap between tech and non tech . On the other hand , none of the businesses are planning to ditch digital solutions and get back to 17th century paper based business model, SE and their variants of job profiles are more important. Isn't it ?
SWE makes more money for sure. DS is generally less stressful in my opinion.
It's not about money . More stability in career as SWE is more important to run the business be it cab services or providing operating systems or even selling car tires. Software and Databases are indispensable.
You have more options of places to go as SWE. DS is stable, but not as stable as SWE since you need to be in pretty scaled company or at least growing rapidly to be valued appropriately.
There are plenty of startups attempting to automate and democratize data science and ML processes. There is no magic in DS, it all requires good software running to do anything of value.
The magic is needed all the time for only top 10% businesses but SWE is like daily meal .can't live without it .
Mature companies make data driven business decisions. More and more companies will do that and DS are needed in that sense. But I think SWE and DS are merging into ML Engineer or SWE in Data or whatever the title is. Since you have Analytics + SWE experiences, ML engineer or those who write production ML code is a great opportunity for you imo
Yeah . Thanks
Go into SWE, forget data science. It’s a farce
Thanks
Analytics and Insights is huge, I wouldn’t discount it
DS will probably become a skill set as opposed to a career in a few years.. ML engineer is probably a better bet