TC 140 Stay or go? Verbal offer came in for 120 base, seems max for their “data scientist” pay band, but where I am now we just hired a junior dude with no tech stack at 125. My current position is a lot of everything, but very little DS/ML (all devops, DE, SWE, and project managment/biz users relationship). I’ve got no technical mentors, but my boss is amazing and is developing my leaderahip skills and seems to be working on a promotion or raise for me (nothing material yet). I’m countering the offer, I loved the Aetna team, but torn in thinking of trading off massive stability and reapect in my current position for an unknown that isn’t even a 15% increase when I’m pretty sure an 11% increase followed by a 3.5% is coming in my current position next month. I want to be a leader, but for technical work and groups. I don’t think I’ll ever get technical development where I am; makes me think its critical. Also worried about shifting from aviation to insurance, a place that is a target for all politicians.
Where is the Aetna offer?
Hartford
It doesn't seem to be a very attractive offer to start with. If I were you, I'd ask to speak with the manager again and go through the job responsibilities, team culture, work from home policy, expectation...etc. Aetna has a pretty big DS team comparing to other insurance companies. Some data scientists work like a data analyst or business analyst writing queries most of time. Some focus on building tableau dashboards. Some work on building models. Please make sure that their expectations for you align to your career goals. With the recent merger with CVS, many of the employee benefits are getting cut. I wouldn't expect a big scale promotion or a big raise anytime soon. It's probably better to negotiate as much as you can before you join.
I just declined today. They didn’t make it easy for me to say yes to leave a job I love that has stability, pretty good benefits, and a pay difference that I’ll close in the next 6 months. I had to negotiate COBRA coverage because they offer no benefits for the first 90 days and I am the main provider for my family with a toddler; they didn’t offer enough to cover the whole period. Easy to say no. I think they’re looking for a real bargain; they might get it. Still, I thought the team was pretty excellent in way of personalities and vision. They wanted me to build models and increase their maturity in the SWE and ML/AI space (they use R at most complex and the heaviest quant side is stats), but I would be alone in the knowledge of those things. No mentorship in the department in those specific spaces, but they could offer mentorship in stats - which is cool, but I have two years in a PhD focused on econometrics (I’m not really needing for that). In all, I wish they made it easy to say yes; I really liked the team and that they wanted me to lay the framework for what they would become in those spaces. They had an expectation around me being entrepreneurial (I felt the sentiment was genuine, I thrive in that kind of environment of ambiguity). At 130 base, it would have been hard to say no, at 135 it would have been an easy yes. Recruiter asked me to write this to the hiring manager; I’m hesitant to do so. It set the tone for the next time I’m on the market.
Thanks for your comment... I’m pretty bummed about declining. You’ve made me feel more comfortable about it. I suspect that promotions and raises are off the table for a while once you say “I do”.
Hi - I have an offer from them, when you declined, did they offer to increase the package? Also any idea how is the NYC office culture?
Hi UNICEF! Did you end up joining CVS?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
3563
Job market is brutal for SWEs 🥲
Layoffs
Yesterday
712
Got Laid off but don't feel anything
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1692
Meta E6 offer.
Tech Industry
6h
1019
How bad is it in meta?
World Conflicts
Yesterday
263
Since people still can’t wrap their minds around the fact the Gaza death toll hasn’t changed
What is the team working on ? What is the future of Aetna DS team ? How strong is the leadership ? Who leads the team ?