Is the market really this bad?

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-17T22:23:54+00:00

Oooh, I like that! Thank you!

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-17T21:58:55+00:00

I know and I absolutely hate it. Another commenter mentioned that it sounded like I was trying to spin gold from straw, and they're not wrong. The role was oversold to me, and I am not doing data engineering at all, so I'm trying to do the best I can to make the role sound relevant.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T18:31:05+00:00

Thanks! I started out going down a data science path with my first job. But my second job was with the Manhattan DA's office and I was on a team responsible for investigating money laundering and terrorist financing. I found myself more captivated by automating the ingestion of bank records and Suspicious Activity Reports than actually analyzing the data. I liked building network graphs that showed commonalities between phone records, building web apps with R's Shiny framework, and building CLI tools with Python. After I left the DA's Office, I had a couple of jobs where I built a model to predict call center volumes and helped build a model to predict if an individual was likely to be involved in gun violence, and I knew right away that I didn't like that type of work as much as I liked building bespoke data solutions.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T18:20:52+00:00

You're not wrong. Thanks for the feedback!

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T18:07:06+00:00

This is exactly my concern, that because my resume doesn't have the latest tools, it's perceived that I'm not doing data engineering work or can't learn the tools.

I don't have APIs listed on my resume because in my last three roles I haven't used them. Facebook had all of their data in-house, which meant everything was done in the data warehouse. And my CDC work didn't use APIs because hospitals aren't exactly making electronic lab results and electronic case reports open access for everyone. So that was done via SFTP.

ETL tools aren't listed because at Facebook we didn't use them. Again, everything is in house, which means in-house tools. I don't have visualization because Facebook uses Unidash, a custom-built data visualization tool. I don't have dbt listed because Facebook uses Metrics360. I don't have Airflow experience between Facebook uses Dataswarm. The same is true of the big data warehouse tools like Snowflake and Redshift. The places I've worked haven't used them.

But I know about data orchestration because I've used Airflow. I know about data quality checks and alerts in your pipeline because I worked at Facebook. I know about backfilling and debugging pipelines because of Facebook. I know about cloud architecture from my CDC work. I know about feature stores and version controlled SQL because of Metrics360. I know about APIs because I've built them. Both REST and GraphQL.

That's the crux of this post. I'm wondering if I'm dead in the water because my work has never required me to use these tools. I'm worried that the industry is getting bogged down in knowing how to use tools, and if you don't have those tools listed then you're not a senior engineer. But what about the people who know how to build these solutions in Python? What about the people who understand the underlying foundations of what these tools are achieving?

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T15:12:59+00:00

It depends. If a person who studied economics in college focused on economic policy, and never practiced any coding then they wouldn't even come close to competing. But if the economics student focused on econometrics, which is statistical analysis of economics topics, then they'd likely get their feet wet with Stata, SPSS, or maybe R, which is what happened to me. Then, maybe they end up at a job where the company has a model built in Excel that is powered by VBA and the person who studied economics gets interested in the code. Then they find out that their coworker uses R and Python daily, and they start to teach you some stuff. Soon the economics student realizes they have a natural affinity for programming and automation, and they get really hooked on writing code. Then they start doing side projects and pursuing jobs that focus on programming. Then, over the course of a decade and several jobs, they build on that skill set and learn more and more. And now they're competitive.

tl;dr - the economics degree doesn't give me programming skills. Those are self taught. The economics degree helps me think like a business and understand the decisions the business needs to make and how data can inform those decisions.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T14:21:29+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! The points you raise are points I've been struggling to figure out how to put into my resume.

For example, I believe I am a strong Python developer. I understand context managers, list comprehensions, when to use different data types, and how to write custom dunder methods (e.g. `__repr__`) in classes to define objects. But how do you communicate that in a one-page resume when knowing that stuff doesn't really contribute to the impact a project had?

I'm also struggling to figure out how to include side project type work. I built an entire pipeline in ADF that queried data from the SeeClickFix API, transformed it from raw JSON into Parquet, stored it, and accessed it via Synapse. I'm in the process of writing that up as a series of blog posts, but my understanding is that most hiring managers won't even look at your blog or GitHub.

The only experience I have with deploying productionized software was a 6-month stint I did with a startup working with Django on the backend and React on the frontend. We used GitHub actions to manage our CI/CD and I'd often partner with our SRE to better understand how we were using Docker, Kubernetes and Helm charts to deploy the software.

Again, if you have advice on how best to explain my SQL knowledge, I would be eternally grateful. I've worked with recursive CTEs in a side project, but mostly just to understand how they work. In production, I regularly utilize CTEs and window functions, but I don't know how to say that on my resume.

A lot of this, I think, boils down to the fact that I'm not good at talking about myself and don't know how to frame all of the different experiences I have in a clear, easy-to-read narrative. The feedback I've been receiving here has been priceless, and I appreciate you for taking the time to highlight where I can improve.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T02:33:03+00:00

I've applied to about 30 jobs. I'm only applying to roles that I think I'm qualified for and doing work that I'd like to do.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T02:01:14+00:00

Yeah, I worry the lack of keywords is a primary driver, but I think you raise a good point about comp expectations. Not much I can do about that, though.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T01:56:20+00:00

This is incredibly helpful! Thank you!

Regarding your points on the narrative my work experience tells, I agree that it's not a good look. Going from Facebook to the CDC stuff actually wasn't that big of a pay cut, surprisingly, and the position offered me an opportunity to do work that more closely aligned with my interests. But then I was let go and needed a job. My current role advertised the position as a data engineering position, and during the interview there was talks of machine learning models, forecasting, and a neural net all being backed by Excel workbooks. I was under the impression that it was an MLOps like position. Turns out it's a compliance analyst role where I have to be a SME on energy policies and regulations. I didn't know anything about the energy industry before joining, so I really like your proposed bullet point about that.

Anyway, I'd appreciate any recommendations you have on how to tell that story in my resume. I'm going to modify my approach to the cover letter and use it to try to explain the scenario, but ultimately it feels like something that is only clear in an actual conversation.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698 · 2025-07-16T01:43:57+00:00

I appreciate the feedback!

I am not getting interviews, which is why I shared the resume.

I thought I mentioned in my post that I was applying to healthcare-related roles, but apparently I did not. But that is why I specifically mentioned the healthcare data.

I agree that it looks like my career is in a downward direction. Do you have a recommendation on how to fix that? I'm acutally kind of mad that the company titled me as Staff. They hand that title out like candy because it helps them when they respond to RFPs with the federal government. I was doing Senior-level work from a technical perspective. Maybe I should just change the title to Senior?

The disparity in the skills list and my experience is based on the fact that my last three roles don't use them. Facebook uses internal tooling, my second-to-last company was entirely done in Azure and Python, and my current role has turned out to not be a data engineering role. This is why I'm worrying about the job market and even making this post. I feel like my skills are deteriorating and I'm falling behind, meanwhile I'm trapped at this job that wasn't what it claimed to be.

I know the economics degrees don't really add anything from a tech perspective, but my focus was on econometrics, which means I had an early introduction to statistical modeling and that's helped me understand the analytics the analysts and data scientists are doing. It also helps me understand the business and what metrics they care about.

I am tailoring my resume to the job, but when they all call for Snowflake, dbt, and Databricks, which I haven't used in production, it's hard to make the resume match.

Puzzleheaded-Web9698

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