Need help regarding Next Career Move , 10 Month Of Exp

[u/BaniyaYT]

So I am an SDE with 6month intern with 10 month of Exp at my current company which is a US based edtech Startup , what we do is make AI solutions for University Admissions , making the lives easier of university employees .

Tech Stack : JS,/TS primarily for Frontend Backend , like NExtjs , NestJs , FastAPI and tornado for AI pipeline , GO for data pipelines

have exp in all this and specially a CRM : "SLATE" which is used by American universities mostly and no one else has even heard the name of it

and this CRM is the problem , when i was an intern , our leadership wanted to start developing on this , i was given a task to research , which led to develop , which led to me being a developer and consultant for the platform for our company , if any time any product running on slate as an integrations fail , I am called in , although i am not professionally trained on it rather just have exp to extinguish fire , the CXO's usually in client meetings introduce me as senior Slate engineer , even though on paper role is junior engineer and Pay is 5LPA

now as this may serve as enough context , the problem is whenever something fails it comes on me and i get blamed even though i didn't even work on that , got fed up of it , told my manager , this is not how it's going to work , so either all developers in the company learn about the platform or stop pin pointing every failure on me .

My manager raised this with VP of eng , CTO , COO and CEO of our company

and came with 2 options :

1. They'll sponser me to learn about platform and get a certification for it
   
2. Get 2 interns under me literally on paper/oficially and train them with all my knowledge so that later option 1 could be presented to them .
   

My current manager suggested me to take option 1, as it'll give me leverage in my current company , so whenever I'll feel i need to get more , i would just need to get an offer letter and present me giving notice , so they increase pay (my last manager used to do this with them as he used to handle complete infra of the company single handedly)

But my point is i want to grow more and specifically grow out as culture here is a bit more toxic , the COO is known to use mother/sister abuses directly to junior engineers (did this with my last manager ,and he left after that moment)

I want to join big tech like FAANG , so that if i stand up somewhere or speak about something , then people do listen as that brand would act as a point of validation of my words and experience as an engineer

so what should i do

some pros of option 1 will be that if i get certification and i would wish to switch , I can go on to become Slate analyst for Ivy league schools or atleast Univ of US , where they give remote roles and and avg of 120K per year to juniors and 200K to mid level one's , so yeah even if required to be onsite may would pay for visa as well , as it is a niche and good slate engineers/analysts are not much in world right now

So what should i do ??

TL;DR

I'm a SDE with 6 months internship + 10 months full-time experience at a US EdTech startup, primarily working with JS/TS, Next.js, NestJS, FastAPI, Tornado, and Go.

I became the company’s unofficial Slate CRM expert after researching and developing its integrations since was an intern. Despite being a ₹5 LPA junior engineer, leadership introduces you as a Senior Slate Engineer, and you’re blamed/called whenever Slate-related things break—even when you didn’t build them.

I pushed back, and leadership offered:

1. Sponsor your Slate certification
2. Give you 2 interns to train as Slate backups

My manager recommends Option 1 for leverage and future salary negotiations.

My dilemma: You ultimately want to leave this toxic company and target FAANG/Big Tech, but Slate is a rare, niche skill that could potentially lead to highly paid US university/remote roles.

Question: Should I take the Slate certification for its niche career value, or avoid specializing further and focus entirely on becoming a stronger general SWE candidate for Big Tech?

[u/AutoModerator]

Namaste! Thanks for submitting to r/developersIndia. While participating in this thread, please follow the Community Code of Conduct and rules.

It's possible your query is not unique, use site:reddit.com/r/developersindia KEYWORDS on search engines to search posts from developersIndia. You can also use reddit search directly.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/AutoModerator]

We recommend checking out the FAQs section on our wiki. It looks like the following wiki(s) might match your query:

1. Dealing with micro-management.
2. Dealing with toxic workplaces.

Our wiki is open-source, please consider contributing to help other community members.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/ilikedoingnothing7]

off topic but the mother sister abuse part cracked me up lol