| I quit my job in May 2019... before the pandemic started. I was working as a senior data analyst at an insurance company in Canada. The work was boring, thankless and pretty exhausting but I was paid well (for a data analyst, anyway). There were no opportunities on the data science team since I didn't have an MSc so I didn't have a clear next step. At the same time, I had started the OMSCS program that January and that was eating up my off time. I was too busy just trying to stay on top of school and work that I just couldn't see myself having the time to prep for tech interviews or do some side projects to jump-start the tech side of my resume. I decided I just wanted a breather. I resigned and cited wanting to get ahead on my degree. I figured this would be a reasonable narrative if the gap in my employment were to ever come up during an interview. I spent 10 months focusing on school, enjoying my time and improving my development skills. When I started looking, I applied to about 25 data scientist and a handful of ML engineer roles. I received no callbacks except for one ML Eng role which didn't go anywhere. Luckily an old manager was starting a data science team at another insurance company at the same time as I was looking. He basically handed me a data engineer role with a bump in compensation in early 2020. If I reflect: - It worked out extremely well for me. I left a non-technical job, had a nice 10 month break and ended up getting a development job where I get to write code all day. I actually enjoy my work now and I have learned so much since then. Zero regrets for me. - At the same time, I underestimated how little my experience as a data analyst meant to data science teams. I would have had to apply to many more jobs to get something via the standard online application approach. I think that would have been really stressful. - I ate through about 25% of my cash which was a little painful to watch. I think if you have a strong skill set and experience profile, its probably just fine. If you were like me and trying to make a big switch (eg. data analyst to data scientist or some kind of eng), it was a risky move and I wouldn't recommend it without a plan. I lucked out. YMMV. |
As an aside, this is total nonsense. For gods sake, if someone has the skills to do data science (and if you can code and do analysis then you definitely do) arbitrary gatekeeping on a credential makes no goddamn sense.
EDIT: > At the same time, I underestimated how little my experience as a data analyst meant to data science teams.
Not all data science teams, I've been doing this for a while and absolutely adore getting people with analytics experience, as it's critical to success in a lot of DS teams and is hard to train.