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That’s why you become a data engineer and get the best of both worlds. If you can market yourself to a company as a “full stack data developer” you will make mo

That’s why you become a data engineer and get the best of both worlds. If you can market yourself to a company as a “full stack data developer” you will make more money than either category

amznthrowaway2 8y ago
"data engineer" is often considered a lower prestige title than data scientist. "Data scientist" is a title recently thrown around a lot for positions that used to be called "data analyst", with no strong ML or SWE ability required. Amazon's title for scientists with strong ML engineering ability is called "Applied Scientist" and it's paid significantly higher than SWE
- grogenaut 8y ago
  You're claiming to know amazon internal except you're also using SWE, not SDE, the standard name for software devs there. Also amazon seems to hire very few Applied Scientists and thus is likely cherry picking for this role. The one I work near is an industry thought leader at Principal Applied Scientist. They'd be a leading researcher if they were in academia.
  - amznthrowaway2 8y ago
    Software engineers are given the SDE title at Amazon but I just used SWE as the more general "software engineer" acronym.
- gaius 8y ago
  a title recently thrown around a lot for positions that used to be called "data analyst" Agreed. Maybe this is different in different markets but in London the vast majority of "data scientist" positions advertised are really PowerBI, Excel, etc. If there is any ML it is just to feed data into a black box model. If you were both smart and lucky you might be able to sneak R in by the backdoor and start doing actual data science, but it would be an uphill battle.
bitL 8y ago
Data Engineer role is about building big data/streaming pipelines for data and often DevOps aspects of keeping such pipeline deployed and online. A boring, dead-end job. Avoid. Make yourself both ML/DL master and SWEng and you'll be doing extremely well.
- RhodesianHunter 8y ago
  I do not find my Data Engineer job either boring or dead end, but thanks for the condescension.
  - zaptheimpaler 8y ago
    I love data engineering - atleast when I practiced it at an adtech company, it involved lots of interesting challenges around performance, distributed systems and a mix of SWE & Ops work. Buut, applying to data engineering jobs I see where the parent poster is coming from (minus the condescension) - a lot of them are about writing simple ETL jobs, and they tend to be lower paid & less prestigious.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Those certainly exist, but aren’t what I was referring to in my post. The “data engineers” I’ve worked with (and am) are usually distributed systems people who also know a bit of data science. In that case it’s basically a higher “prestige” software engineering role
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  You know that's usually the hard part of ML projects, right? It may be boring, but it also tends to be the less least replaceable component.
  - bitL 8y ago

That’s why you become a data engineer and get the best of both worlds. If you can market yourself to a company as a “full stack data developer” you will make more money than either category

amznthrowaway2 8y ago

"data engineer" is often considered a lower prestige title than data scientist. "Data scientist" is a title recently thrown around a lot for positions that used to be called "data analyst", with no strong ML or SWE ability required. Amazon's title for scientists with strong ML engineering ability is called "Applied Scientist" and it's paid significantly higher than SWE

grogenaut 8y ago
You're claiming to know amazon internal except you're also using SWE, not SDE, the standard name for software devs there. Also amazon seems to hire very few Applied Scientists and thus is likely cherry picking for this role. The one I work near is an industry thought leader at Principal Applied Scientist. They'd be a leading researcher if they were in academia.
- amznthrowaway2 8y ago
  Software engineers are given the SDE title at Amazon but I just used SWE as the more general "software engineer" acronym.
gaius 8y ago
a title recently thrown around a lot for positions that used to be called "data analyst" Agreed. Maybe this is different in different markets but in London the vast majority of "data scientist" positions advertised are really PowerBI, Excel, etc. If there is any ML it is just to feed data into a black box model. If you were both smart and lucky you might be able to sneak R in by the backdoor and start doing actual data science, but it would be an uphill battle.

bitL 8y ago

Data Engineer role is about building big data/streaming pipelines for data and often DevOps aspects of keeping such pipeline deployed and online. A boring, dead-end job. Avoid. Make yourself both ML/DL master and SWEng and you'll be doing extremely well.

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
I do not find my Data Engineer job either boring or dead end, but thanks for the condescension.
- zaptheimpaler 8y ago
  I love data engineering - atleast when I practiced it at an adtech company, it involved lots of interesting challenges around performance, distributed systems and a mix of SWE & Ops work. Buut, applying to data engineering jobs I see where the parent poster is coming from (minus the condescension) - a lot of them are about writing simple ETL jobs, and they tend to be lower paid & less prestigious.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Those certainly exist, but aren’t what I was referring to in my post. The “data engineers” I’ve worked with (and am) are usually distributed systems people who also know a bit of data science. In that case it’s basically a higher “prestige” software engineering role
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
deepnotderp 8y ago
You know that's usually the hard part of ML projects, right? It may be boring, but it also tends to be the less least replaceable component.
- bitL 8y ago