Comment by scarface_74

Comment by scarface_74 5 days ago

> Good point, to what extent do employers see this as experience though?

They don’t see it as experience.

> I'm not sure if I want to switch back, but for now I want to keep that option open.

For the most part once you start going deep down one rabbit hole, it’s almost impossible to change jobs and go back to software development. I see it happen all of the time with people who leave software development and go into “DevOps” [sic].

Companies aren’t going to take your side projects seriously. With the current job market, why wouldn’t they hire someone with recent relevant experience? If you can get an interview with a company that relies heavily on coding tests you might stand a chance.

The best way to pivot back is to get a job where you do have recent experience - in your case data - and then after awhile do a formal or informal transfer to more of a software engineering focus

mettamage 5 days ago

> If you can get an interview with a company that relies heavily on coding tests you might stand a chance.

Fair point. I think if I grind leetcode full-time for 3 months, I'll be there. I have around 250 questions under my belt (50 hard), and I feel definitely familiar nowadays. I'm mostly in the refining part, sometimes still in the "I don't see the trick" part.

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scarface_74 5 days ago

So the question becomes how do you get to the interview and stand out among the hundreds of people applying for the same position?
I don’t have a good answer for that as a software developer. I looked for bog standard remote development jobs as a Plan B with 20+ years of development and deep AWS experience last year and the year before and it is a shit show out there now.
Luckily, I have deep experience in my niche - strategic cloud consulting + app dev and a stint working at a BigTech company in the consulting department that opened a lot of doors.
I think the play may be to stay in analytics and get into a well known company.
Also, make sure you are taking on assignments with bigger “scope” and higher “impact”. Don’t be a ticket taker.

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- mettamage 4 days ago
  
  > I think the play may be to stay in analytics and get into a well known company.
  > Also, make sure you are taking on assignments with bigger “scope” and higher “impact”. Don’t be a ticket taker.
  Solid advice, thank you :)
  I was a ticket taker. The irony is that I'm not even a week in on my first job and this manager is definitely not making me be a ticket taker. I already completed some scraping projects. Not sure where that falls as being a "data analyst" but yea the data analysts are quite technical anyway (i.e. no one uses Excel, it's all SQL and Python).
  
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