Can't decide if I should stay where I'm at, hold out for something better, or go to grad school.
- 8 yrs experience in DE and DS/ML
- Solo DE and dev for nearly 4 years at old job - prestigious private trust company that could have afforded to pay a lot more than 81k/yr.
- Gave up trying to get a raise and to have them move on from on prem SQL and Sharepoint to the cloud.
- Got an offer to make 160k and 180k because I know APIs for this platform called Addepar but the employers were over an hour away and I wanted to do more than just APIs/ETL.
- Got another offer to make $47/hr in a fintech-credit union like place that on paper was a highly interesting DS/ML/AI role. 6 month contract.
- New-ish boss at trust company (who knew very little of what I did) said they don't price match, but somehow management approved mine (for the first time in their 24 year history), but then she said she changed her mind because she thought I didn't seem happy.
- Partner (Dir. of BI) said take the 6 month contract. Boss is retiring. We'll probably all change our mind afterward.
- Contract job has me siloed in a mundane SQL project and is not living up to the DS/ML/AI expectation.
- Emailed old job reminding them that I didn't want to leave and my unhappiness was partly from being underpaid but also because of problems that the company would have benefited from me solving
- Found out they agreed with me on those problems and finally took up my advice to move on from Sharepoint and on-prem SQL to a lakehouse (after I built an entire databricks model for them) BUT... they also replaced me.
- My contract was renewed where I'm at but I am concerned I'll remain underpaid and truly unhappy
Everyone on this subs knows how dismal the market is.
I agree with the side bar: certs aren't going to help me much here. AI disagrees. Recruiters are 50/50 on it.
I feel like recruiters only look at your current job which, like I said, is very mundane, especially compared to previous roles (I did AWS and Snowflake 2 jobs ago).
So what do I do? Be grateful I have something and just keep my head down?
Mind you: this is in a heavily regulated industry and therefore not the place to go take initiative showing off some new and better solution.
I have floated the idea of getting an MS in Econometrics. It does include a lot of DS and ML coursework but it's all applied to econ (studied math and econ in undergrad).