I have been interviewing over the past few months and now have two offers in front of me that I am trying to decide between. First to provide some perspective, I have about 8 years of solid work experience primarily in financial and analytic roles mostly in the telecom industry. Currently I am working in Denver, CO on a marketing team where I aggregate data out of Oracle SQL and craft tables that can be used for to provide better understanding of our customers. Additionally, I use python/r to run predictive models based off business ask as well as craft new ways of looking at reporting with Power BI. The first offer I got is at Comcast Business for a Principal Data Scientist opportunity. This role would be very similar to the role I hold now but would utilize AWS as a platform to work with the data, primarily databricks in EC2, lambda, S3 and Glue. It would allow me to stay in Denver and I would get 21 days of PTO with 10 holidays. The second offer I got is at Amazon for a Business Analyst (L5) opportunity. This role would be in a very interesting area of the digital organization. It would primarily be using AWS Redshift and Quicksight to run SQL queries and build dashboards. It would require me to move to Seattle, WA and I would only get 10 days of PTO for the first year with 7 holidays. This would increase to 15 PTO days after the first year. The cost of living in Denver is cheaper then Seattle as well. Both roles have similar pay when you breakout the vesting and both would be a significant raise from where I am today. The hiring managers of both companies seem really cool and I don't expect to be micromanaged with either. I am having trouble deciding which is the better opportunity to accept. The Comcast one has a better title and skillset learning opportunities but the Amazon one would be more interesting and may open up many doors for me later on. What would you do in this situation? Edit: Atop of this, my gf accepted a role at AWS in finance and it would be easier to just go the Amazon way.
Amazon never once
Choose Amazon. You’ll learn way more.
Amazon has, in fact, 15 days of PTO. 10 of actual PTO + 5 days of personal time off or smth (don’t remember what they call it). Also, when I was there I was working really hard (like most people lol), and no one really seemed to care how many days off I took. So I would add another 2-3 days on top of those 15. It’s a great place to learn, and wlb is not THAT bad. The problem is the pressure and the FOMO. I still remember how I was working on a program meticulously building it from the ground up, then took a Friday off (Friday was the big team meeting day), and on Monday I learned that someone else took over my program 😅😂 Took me another two weeks to get it back. Amazon is full of this kind of ridiculous BS:)))
+1 to the PTO stuff. Sure, it says 10 days. But it’s between you and your manager on more than that and I’ve never met one that really cares if you take a few days more
I had 15 days of pto and 5 personal days in year 1. After year 1 I had 20 days pto and 5 personal days. After year 6 that goes to 25 days pto.
Usually it’s always anything > Amazon but in this case…Comcast is shit.
They are ranked one of the best places to work from what I have read. I would love to work at Google, Microsoft, SalesForce etc but getting in isn't that easy. I have a pending interview for Facebook but it's low pay ($110k in the bay area).
Amazon is NOT a good place to work. Definitely a great place to learn, earn money, and go a place like Google. But most people at Amazon are pretty miserable.
I would take Amazon over Comcast any day for equivalent roles, but principal data scientist sounds a lot better than business analyst. I think it can be leveraged to later get a more senior DS job at faang paying a lot more.
Business analyst is $hity non tech role. For 99 percent of your time you will be rerunning sql queries to create weekly business report. It has no growth path also. You will hardly find any l6 business analysts forget to find any l7 analyst. I think it will not be a great idea to join amazon as BA
Honestly I think the business intelligence engineer role is a better fit as I work my way up to the data science.
However it’s possible to move the roles internally providing you get the right skills. A friend of mine moved from BA->BIE->DS->AS in about 3 yrs and now is an AS mgr.
You can negotiate for extra vacation day for first year at Amazon . I did that.
I tried negotiating PTO and compensation as well as the L5 and they refused to budge
Hear it from an Amazon employee, go anywhere but Amazan. If you join as L5, you are in a mid-level role, opposed to L6 that is senior. You will be bullied by L6 and L7 engineers, your path to promotion is a very difficult and unclear path, and you’d most likely leave Amazon with disappointment. Amazon has one of the most toxic work environments there is, and this culture is rooted in its cores.
Are you still an Amazon employee?
Principal data scientist sounds way better than business analyst.
YoE? Position? Offer details?
Was the detail that I provided not sufficient? I mentioned that I have 8 YoE and the positions are Principal Data Scientist at Comcast vs Business Analyst at Amazon. Both pay about $130k tc with a base around $115k over the first few years with opportunities to earn more down the road.
Sorry you did mention YoE - I just missed it.