If you were to start over again, what would you do…
Hey Blinders, I work for a financial planning firm that specializes in working with tech professionals. As a result I’ve become familiar with Blind and levels.fyi, and needless to say current me wishes that college-age me knew more about the CS path than they did. Growing up I had always assumed that one had to be some sort of programming and calculus savant to work in tech. It wasn’t until I started my current job that I learned how many different paths there within the tech industry. With that in mind I created a Udemy account and began learning Python about a year and a half ago. Shout out to Jose Portilla, Colt Steele, Andrei Neagoie and Angela Yu for creating terrific courses that assume you don’t even know how to print(“Hello world”). I’ve enjoyed learning from each of them and putting in practice what I’ve learned (tutorial hell be damned) to the point where I’ve given serious thought about switching careers. As I look at what opportunities are out there, I see four main paths that have piqued my interest: software engineer, data analyst, data scientist and data engineer. Obviously there are many more roles than just these, but I’m working with what is still a relatively basic understanding here. I have no ambitions of working for a MAANG company, so assume the following is talking about your run-of-the-mill non-MAANG mega-corp. To my outside perspective, a high-level view of these roles seems to indicate that: * SWE is the ultimate sweet spot of TC + job security. * DE is nearly equivalent to SWE in TC + job security, but slightly lower in perceived prestige (which isn’t important to me). To be fair DE is the path I know the least about. * DS has the high TC aspect, but can be among the first tech-related roles to be let go in economic downturns since it isn’t a direct revenue generator. * DA has lower TC, has relatively better job security than DS, and can either be a standalone career path or used as a stepping stone to DS. As I’ve worked through my various Udemy courses I’ve found that I have more of an aptitude towards the analysis/projection side as opposed to the engineering side. I’ve enjoyed working with datasets using Pandas, Seaborn and SQL more than building blackjack, for example. I suppose my question is for those on the DA/DS side, and is whether or not you’d go the DA/DS route over the SWE route if you were to it over again. Being a few years further down the line than I am, would you recommend I buckle down and try to improve my engineering aptitude or should I continue down the data side? Alternatively, any SWEs that wish they went the DA/DS route? If so, why is that? And finally, if anyone is looking for a reason to disburse a useful tidbit of knowledge you have but hasn’t found the right opportunity to do so, I’m all ears and happy to learn. Thanks for taking time out of your day to read this 🙏 Blind tax YOE: 4 TC: 80k
Very true, and if he’s a CFA then he certainly knows about the role I’m working in right now. Fortunately I’m at a good company right now to where I don’t need to get out asap, and the recent layoffs these past couple of weeks have been a good reminder to not take that for granted. Thank you for your response 🙏
My path to data engineer was analyst->Business intelligence engineer->tech lead/analyst->data engineer Data engineer is harder to get into from outside the industry. Analyst is a good entry point to go to DE, or BIE. DE can be where you land long-term, or you could go from DE to SWE, although the pay at many companies is the same between DE and SWE
DE would be the end goal after taking a few different steps to get there, I realize now I didn’t make that clear in the op. I place a high value on flexibly, and it is good to know that the DA role started you down the path towards DE—I had more commonly seen it towards DS. Also a good dp to confirm that DE and SWE TC is indeed close on a larger scale. Your middle two roles are ones that I am not as familiar with. How did you make the decision to take those jobs? Thank you for your response 🙏
Analyst: 50/50 excel/SQL BIE: 20/50/30 excel/SQL/data visualization DE: 80/20 SQL/{Python, Scala}
If DE is what your end goal is (or at least think so as of now) you will have better luck aiming for a Data Analyst/Business Analyst for a few years first, ideally at a medium/large sized company with a defined data and analytics team. You will learn a lot about different role requirements as a DA, and it can give you the chance to master the tech stack assuming you want to stay with that company long term. My path after getting a masters immediately after my bachelors was Business Ops Analyst > Business Intelligence Engineer. I have been with my current company as a BIE for 6 months, and planning on moving into a DE role in another 6-12 months or so. 2 YOE
At this relatively early stage I’d say the end goal would be either SWE going down the engineering path or DA/DS/DE going down the data path. Although now that I think about it DE now feels like more of a middle ground than pure engineering or pure data. I’ve worked with firms of different sizes in my current field and I agree that there is something to be said for the training programs more commonly seen in larger organizations with well-defined practices. Was your masters more on the CS side or the business side? My degree is in finance so I have domain knowledge there to where I wouldn’t be starting from scratch from both a programming standpoint and a general business acumen standpoint, just the programming one. LinkedIn posted their BIE TC above, does that line up with your experience? Thank you for your response 🙏
My masters was in Business Analytics, so much more business than CS. Although my day to day is a decent split of data warehousing and pipeline work, and interacting with PMs and the business. As for TC, yeah mine is almost exactly like what LinkedIn said. I was making $70k as a Business Ops Analyst (which was underpay but it was my first job after college) and now im at $120k TC
What do you like about CS? Just the money? Do you like math? These questions should factor much more into your career decision that whatever slight prestige edge you think some title has.
I’d say the primary things I enjoy about CS are working with technologies that are continuously being improved upon and working in an environment where it is ok to fail. Right now if I screw up it can cause serious financial ramifications for a real human being and their family, and that weighs heavily on me. It isn’t necessarily life or death, but it can be not far from that at times. I feel I’d sleep better working in an environment where the stakes aren’t quite so high. The math I use in my current role centers around working with investments/taxes/account optimization/things of that nature. I’ve created Excel-based tools to help with many of those kinds of tasks. I enjoy both building and using those such to greatly reduce the amount of time and errors associated with such work. While I don’t use calculus or statistics currently, I enjoyed the one statistics class I have taken on Udemy and have another “Math for Data Science” class in my to-do queue. I have never taken a full-fledged calculus course, but I’d be willing to learn if that’s what it took. Evidently I didn’t make it clear how little prestige means to me, so let me be more clear: I could not care less about prestige. I certainly want to put out quality work, but I am very much in the “work to live” category. Having a certain employer or title is not important to me, I would be quite content being a cog in the machine of a company I felt was contributing positively to society. As for the money, to me tech seems like an arena where by learning certain skills you can put yourself in a situation where you’re very much an in-demand quantity (once you have your first job, and recessionary environments aside) that has great opportunities to find a job with the combination of TC/WLB/flexibility that you feel is best suited to you. If the cost to learn these skills can be a $12.99 Udemy course or five and intentional focus during what would otherwise be night/weekend free time, that seems like a worthwhile investment to me as someone looking at working for another 20-30+ years.
Thank you for your response 🙏