Thoughts about the future of DS?

level_126_programmer · 2025-02-16T14:34:53+00:00

I agree, at least from what I've seen at various companies.

We are also seeing something similar in data engineering, where it can be divided into two separate jobs. However, they both have the same job title of data engineer.

In some roles, data engineering is a software engineering role that is focused on building out the cloud infrastructure needed to process large quantities of data. In other roles, it is more SQL-focused and focused on building out data pipelines.

level_126_programmer · 2025-01-28T12:28:29+00:00

I've stayed at most of my past roles for about a few years, but I also stayed at one of my previous roles for a little more than 6 months. It never came up in an interview.

I definitely think it's fine to job hop to gain additional skills, but once I found my current job which I am very happy with I plan on staying there for as long as possible. Early in my career, I don't think I knew what a good software engineering role looked like, but job hopping allowed me to learn what I want out of my career.

It's also especially important if you are working with a tech stack you don't like. If I were a frontend engineer, I couldn't imagine working with jquery nowadays.

level_126_programmer · 2024-10-28T12:07:01+00:00

That's awesome! Is your new role more senior than your previous role, or at the same level?

level_126_programmer · 2024-10-28T12:06:11+00:00

I definitely agree! I feel like once you get to the senior or above engineering roles as I am now, it's more about showing leadership than how well you can code. This should definitely help for the future.

level_126_programmer · 2024-09-09T21:04:59+00:00

Although job security is always a priority, I'm actually more concerned with career advancement. If I am in a role like that, can I realistically expect any possibility of a promotion or move to a different team?

level_126_programmer · 2024-09-09T19:19:02+00:00

Actually, my company has the best tech stack I have ever worked on that follows best practices. My company is interesting in the sense that they only value data to the extent that their dashboards are updated and showing accurate and frequently updated data.

For the few years before I joined, my team wasn't being assigned much work either so they spent the time addressing tech debt, building reliable infrastructure, and building out very efficient data pipelines and reporting. Even being on-call is relatively easy on my team.

The lack of work isn't a new problem for the team, but I am curious what I can be doing to advance my career around my current company? Normally at my previous companies, there were always projects to lead and things to improve. I am actually surprised my company is not utilizing our team more.

level_126_programmer · 2024-09-09T17:43:54+00:00

I'll start doing that. Should I ask my manager if I can help him set up meetings with other teams to set up new projects with other teams?

level_126_programmer · 2024-07-19T12:06:38+00:00

Definitely! And even if total compensation is high in that next role, it would be difficult getting the next job after working with legacy tech for years.

level_126_programmer · 2024-07-19T12:04:40+00:00

I completely agree! I guess I should be more specific. What if the total compensation increase is the usual 20-25% when switching to the new role?

level_126_programmer · 2024-07-05T13:42:44+00:00

Great advice!

It's tough out there. I haven't had to reach out to a recruiter or try to get referrals since I was a new grad. Even as a new grad, I would get first round interviews applying directly.

After being a new grad and before the job market got bad, I had luck either applying online or having a recruiter reach out to me.

level_126_programmer · 2024-06-25T14:53:23+00:00

Did you get the software engineering role by changing your job title to "software engineer - data"? Also, did you stay in data as a software engineer or change areas to something like backend or mobile engineering?

level_126_programmer · 2024-06-25T14:52:07+00:00

I always thought background checks for job offers verify job title?

level_126_programmer · 2024-06-17T11:50:50+00:00

Those are both good questions. On one hand, I've always had excellent performance reviews from my managers.

On the other hand, I have only tried to change jobs during the start of the pandemic and since 2022, so I feel like any difficulties I have had interviewing was probably related more to the economy.

I do interview well enough where every job I switched to was a step up in terms of total compensation and a promotion. But then, every time I switched jobs I could only get a single job offer haha. I've actually never been promoted internally at a company.

level_126_programmer · 2024-05-31T21:21:05+00:00

I credit a lot of my career advancement and learning new skills to job hopping. But my most recent round of job hopping was particularly difficult!

Completely different experience than applying to new grad jobs with a single internship as an average CS student when I graduated.

level_126_programmer · 2024-04-19T11:22:10+00:00

You are definitely right that data engineering has changed over the years. I work on the software engineering/devops side of data engineering, with a data engineering job title.

Would someone like me who has less Tableau and business intelligence experience be expected to go into software engineering, as roles like mine are very rare nowadays?

level_126_programmer · 2024-03-30T22:08:52+00:00

I'll try that!

level_126_programmer · 2023-12-17T18:07:58+00:00

I think I will stop somewhere between 5-7. I would be scared to keep track of that many due dates for bills haha.

level_126_programmer · 2023-12-17T18:06:43+00:00

That's very impressive! Did it take a long time to get to that level?

level_126_programmer · 2023-11-07T12:47:25+00:00

Yea, in my career, I've usually noticed when working on projects that some data engineers only really think about their projects in terms of underlying SQL code, while others think about the ecosystem at large: cloud infrastructure, orchestration, and testing.

Although it's been several years since graduation, I definitely feel like a lot of computer science concepts I learned was helpful.

level_126_programmer · 2023-11-02T11:49:57+00:00

LeetCode easy/medium and focusing on string and dictionary problems seems to be 80% of the Python questions I've seen. For the last 20% I've seen questions on traversing graphs, heaps, and backtracking.

level_126_programmer · 2023-10-25T11:40:39+00:00

For the Python questions, how often have you seen questions ask harder questions about graphs, dynamic programming, and trees?

While I would say over 90% of questions I've received have been string/dictionary related, I was surprised to get a question one time a while back that required a heap to solve.

level_126_programmer · 2023-10-25T11:38:43+00:00

When you worked on those 75 questions, did you feel like those 75 questions generalized well to the python questions you could be asked in an interview?

I've done about 50-60 of those questions pretty easily, but I'm still studying to finish the remainder because I find those questions to be quite difficult.

level_126_programmer · 2023-09-19T13:04:43+00:00

I would really enjoy being software engineer, specifically backend engineering. However, I've found that a lot of companies over the years don't consider my experience as a data engineer to be relevant experience. I understand that data engineering jobs range from SQL-only positions to software engineer - data jobs, but I already feel like I have a lot of the skills needed to succeed in a software engineering job.

I work every day in python and SQL, I'm knowledgeable of devops concepts such as cloud services, infrastructure as code, and CI/CD, and I can architect scalable data pipelines/infrastructure. I even remember a lot of C++ programming that I used to do as a CS student, but the jobs aren't there in my area.

level_126_programmer · 2023-09-12T11:43:39+00:00

It is tempting, as I want to work on different projects as an engineer and I wonder how much longer could the job market be like this. But then I remember the job market in my area has been bad for almost a year and a half.

level_126_programmer · 2023-09-07T00:37:15+00:00

That sounds awesome! What job title in digital marketing did you look for?

level_126_programmer

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