Hi, I am asking on behalf of one of my colleagues who is not too thrilled by research and now has two job offers- one as SWE for a pretty modern company working with data scientists. The other offer is as data scientist in the medical field and building up an infrastructure with different models. Both roles have similar pay and benefits, so the main question is:
which direction would be easier to switch? Is it easier to enter data science after doing SWE for a couple of years or easier to become SWE after working as data scientist for a couple of years?
In our current role, we get some experience with both types of tasks, so they are not sure what they prefer, and wonder whether there is much of a difference between the two roles in terms of "actually, i like the other field more, lemme switch"
Anyone who got advice , experience or estimates?
#SWE or Data Science - which direction is easier to switch?
ripe remnant
eternal pewter
SWE.
Is it easier to enter data science after doing SWE
Extremely easy.
SWE is the high ground. Writing code is where the shortage is.
Every single job in all of society is harder to get and less rewarding than SWE.
Usually the exit opportunities I'd recommend from academia are:
#1 A job that leverages the research area. Doing research in xxx, a job in xxx will pay more $$$ than anything else.
#2 Be a Software Engineer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to SWE.
I actually knew more data scientists than software engineers at one point, despite being employed as a software engineer.
There's just tons of mathematically skilled people who switch into data science. So, so many people who just love Markov Chains and want to do math.
weak prawn
What a data scientist does can vary a lot by company. If you are building powerBI dashboard, then switching to SWE might be difficult. If you are deploying models in prod (including the architecture to support it, not just training the model), then switching to SWE is easier. I'm a DS with 1.5 YOE and I feel like I can switch to SWE, but I would be considered very junior because I have mostly worked on small code base and in teams where code quality wasn't the priority