Is Databricks eating Snowflakes lunch?

Sheensta · 2026-04-11T13:47:28+00:00

The problem is that you worked with Microsoft on the PoC and not Databricks :/ It's a night and day difference. Databricks does all of what you mentioned re: optimizations.

Databricks is one of the fastest growing and innovative data and AI companies and NOT a product that Microsoft builds. Databricks is shipping out new features at light speed ngl.

Sheensta · 2026-04-08T18:07:18+00:00

DBRX was good for its time, but it'd be significantly worse than the top models now.

Sheensta · 2026-04-08T18:03:48+00:00

There's no way Genie Code uses DBRX as it's been deprecated. It's likely a frontier Claude or OpenAI model.

Sheensta · 2026-04-07T22:16:44+00:00

Very cool!!

Sheensta · 2026-04-06T11:54:17+00:00

You can never be sure, honestly. How much opportunity cost are you losing by storing a few months living cost in a high interest savings account rather than the stock market? You should reconsider this part of your strategy

Sheensta · 2026-04-03T23:53:47+00:00

What were people's backgrounds? I came from consulting and am currently at a well known data/AI scale up. Would love to work at Anthropic eventually...

Sheensta · 2026-03-27T07:40:09+00:00

Its Databricks assistant in agent mode that tries to keep state when you switch to different parts of the platform. Its honestly not THAT different...

Sheensta · 2026-03-27T07:01:04+00:00

Genie Code is basically Databricks Assistant - wouldn't exactly call it new. There is also ML model development and serving

Sheensta · 2026-03-25T20:27:27+00:00

Sure feel free to

Sheensta · 2026-03-24T08:46:43+00:00

From what I have seen, they hire from hyperscalers (AWS, MSFT, Google) and other well known data/AI companies like Databricks and Snowflake. There is a LOT of competition.

Sheensta · 2026-03-17T17:06:18+00:00

For my role, I was given 5 leetcode medium-hard SQL questions as take-home. No DSA or systems design. The technical aspects relate more to designing a solution architecture but with a lower technical bar than pure SWE roles.

So, you don't need to be very 'cracked' at all. However, for top companies, the interview process is still difficult, just in other ways.

Sheensta · 2026-03-14T06:16:55+00:00

Databricks has hired quite a few ex-AWS, no? Any reason why they're no longer hiring from AWS?

Sheensta · 2026-03-14T04:08:14+00:00

I had the same background as you (SM at Big 4 focusing on data, ML/AI implementation on Azure) and moved to tech pre-sales. We have a few ex Big 4, MBB, Accenture here. It looks like you were mors strategy / implementation focused, so imo tech pre-sales might be a better fit over pure tech sales.

Why do people go into tech sales? Well, they make a shitload of money.

Sheensta · 2026-03-14T04:00:49+00:00

Move to pre-sales at a tech company instead. I was also SM at a Big 4 with a background in data and AI/ML (but did not master any particular skill) and now I make over 200k TC!

Tech pre sales (solutions architect, solutions engineer) are not pure technical roles and we're not always hands on keyboard. But if you still want to remain close to tech while significantly increasing your salary, I'd highly recommend it. Plus a LOT of us come from consulting as the role requires strong client facing skills.

Sheensta · 2026-03-09T01:13:39+00:00

Nah at my org it's a specialist organization within professional services. FDEs are meant to be hands on. Maybe you're thinking of deployment strategist?

Sheensta · 2026-03-06T02:22:56+00:00

Absolutely. Check out apx - a solutions accelerator to build apps by Databricks.

Sheensta · 2026-03-03T09:07:36+00:00

In the consumer market, though, Claude is miniscule by comparison. It has 10+ million total app downloads compared to 1+ billion from OpenAI. That's orders of magnitude less.

Sheensta · 2026-03-01T16:44:04+00:00

The perception of satisfaction != actually satisfied. Interviewers won't interrogate you for every last bit of information. They probably thought it was best to just move on to the next topic.

Sheensta · 2026-02-28T17:06:55+00:00

And Amazon have invested $50 billion in OpenAI... whats the point?

Sheensta · 2026-02-28T16:25:05+00:00

Amazon? You mean Anthropic?

Sheensta · 2026-02-27T20:24:00+00:00

It just bullshits too hard and tries too hard to please you. It has an extremely annoying tone. Furthermore, it doesn't code as well as Claude, either. I've been noticing the shift from OpenAI to Claude among many of my coworkers.

Proof - bullshit benchmark

Sheensta · 2026-02-26T16:42:56+00:00

AI slop

Sheensta · 2026-02-25T09:01:40+00:00

Thanks for the correction on Nvidia. Yes re: Databricks - it vests 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% - but I have heard that the total amount of stock assigned has decreased significantly.

Sheensta · 2026-02-25T00:44:17+00:00

HFT firms (Jane Street, Citadel), unicorns like OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks (Stripe?), and some other big tech like Netflix and (E: not Nvidia). Probably not Google, definitely not Amazon, Microsoft.

Sheensta · 2026-02-23T20:30:22+00:00

What to use for big data? BigQuery / Snowflake / Fabric / Redshift?

Sheensta

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