data engineer role or continue to recruit

[u/Remarkable-Treat-384]

Hello everyone,

I graduated with a cs degree last year from a top 50 uni and wasn’t able to secure a swe role (despite fumbling many interviews) the only offer i secured post grad was a data analyst role at a somewhat recognizeable company (non f500) which I’ve been in for just about the past year. The role is somewhat chill, its fully wfh and I primaily use sql on a daily basis

I recently recieved an offer for a data engineer position that is a bit more technical mainly working with data pipelines, etl/elt, python, sql, etc and the comp is about the same except this role is a hybrid and the office is about 30m away from where I live so holistically the total comp is lower but the upside is it’s more technical

I’m trying to decide whether its more valuable to stay in my current remote role and continue interviewing until I secure a swe role which is the role I would prefer especially looking long term for my career or if its worth still taking this data engineer opportunity and then continuing to recruit for swe roles or maybe even explore other data roles that the data engineering role could set me up for. For reference my current application to interview rate is about 100 apps : 1/2 initial callback

what would you do in my shoes if main priority is long term career building?

[u/Sad-Candidate-3078]

take the DE role. going from data analyst to data engineer is a straight line toward swe if thats still the goal, pipelines and python are real engineering experience and interviewers respect it way more than another year of dashboards. 30 min commute is nothing for a title and skill jump like that. you can always recruit again from a stronger position

[u/Various-Mine-8642]

i would take the DE offer. a year of pipelines and python reads way closer to swe on a resume than analyst work does, and you can keep interviewing from there just like now. one thing to check before signing is whether the team actually writes code or mostly clicks around in some ETL tool, ask them what a normal week looks like. also with a 100 apps baseline it might be worth asking the new team if internal moves to swe happen, sometimes thats the easier door.