u/ArabicDial

I'm a BI analyst with 3 YOE at a multinational telecom company. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in information systems a couple years back, and when I was applying to jobs at the time i specifically targeted only multinationals for the possibility of one day internally transferring abroad. To my surprise (or not, in this day of age) my company outsources a lot of tech-related roles to poor countries like mine so that path seems increasingly unlikely.

1. I've contemplated learning French solely to immigrate to Canada, since the French-speaking Express Entry stream seems like one of the only options available to me. But then I wonder whether spending 1–2 years intensely learning French is worth the opportunity cost of not upskilling further in my job/career instead.

2. My other option is doing a master's abroad, ideally somewhere that gives graduates a post-study work visa and a pathway to permanent residency. I have around $35k USD saved, mostly from saving ~95% of my salary and some investments. I don't have anything going on outside of work and dont have any dependents. A 1 to 2 year break into a 3-year career wouldn’t be the end of the world for me either.

Why I want to leave? Well I'm sure reddit is all too familiar with the problems here already, but TL;DR: it's urban hell, consistently top 10 worst in HDI, corruption, happiness rankings, overpopulated, insane noise nad air pollution, devaluing currency and economy kept from sinking by other country donations/IMF loans. I wont even get into the specifics of culture and mindset because that would need a post on its own.

I'm looking at Canada and Australia because they're English-speaking, have skilled immigration pathways, and offer the quiet, peaceful lifestyle combined with nature just a few feet away. I grew up across different cultures and continents and I've realized how much being surrounded by nature affects my quality of life. I've spent years exploring google maps streetview as a form of escapism and was always fascinated by the cities and landscapes in these countries.

Unfortunately when people say the grass is always greener, this doesnt apply to my country because there is literally no grass anywhere, no sidewalks, no trees. Just garbage, heat, and sand. As corny as this sounds, I literally can't "touch grass" because it doesnt exist. I'm stuck in my room watching the days go by with my laptop and noise-cancelling earbuds serving as the only form of escapism in this awful reality polluting my ears and clouding my brain. I just don't wanna live to regret not doing something about it.

I've been working for ~3 years at a large multinational in a "Data Analytics" role. Most of my work is basically building dashboards and data models fromHR/finance data. I got bait-and-switched when applying to the job as it was described as a cloud role with alot of linuxy/cloud stuff but i ended up doing lots of power automate and scripts for azure functions that mainly revolved around data, then the team realized i automated my work and had nothing to do so they put me on power bi and data modeling and now i'd say my job mainly consists of being a data analyst along with some power automate/agent stuff. most of this i learned as i'd go about completing a task. note my job title is still described as "software developer" to this day.

I stuck around till now because the job is relatively easy and ive already made a bit of a name for myself in this company that i didn't feel particularly threatend of getting cut. but then i realized i dont think my current skills will amount to much if i do get cut, especially with talks of downsizing at my company.

My original plan was to transition into Data Engineering over the next year. i have an information systems degree, some database design experience/coursework, and i already work with python/sql/data modeling, so DE seemed like the most natural direction. but the more I look at the DE wiki roadmap, the more I notice that a lot of the skills overlap a lot with DevOps: aws, linux, git, ci/cd, docker, kubernetes, terraform.

So now I'm wondering whether I should just go further in that direction instead of trying to also add in the entire DE stack which has a whole bunch of other tools like airflow, dbt, snowflake, postgresql and where the core data warehousing concepts really matter and need time to study. i have gone through this sub's wiki and made a list of things i'd have to learn in this order:

1. Advanced SQL
2. Query optimization/indexing
3. Data modeling
4. Advanced Python
5. PostgreSQL + relational database design
6. OLTP
7. OLAP
8. Data pipelines + dbt
9. Batch processing + Airflow
10. Data warehouses + Snowflake
11. AWS
12. Git + CI/CD
13. Docker
14. Kubernetes
15. Terraform
16. NoSQL
17. Kafka/streaming

In particular I keep seeing skills 11 to 15 mentioned in DE job postings and it makes me wonder if im better off putting a big chunk of my time into cloud/DevOps instead of going deeper into the actual data engineering side. Like what's the point of spending a year learning the whole DE stack if the cloud/DevOps skills are arguably the most in-demand aspect of the DE role in this current market?

The obvious problem is that I'd basically be starting from scratch with DevOps. I assume most DevOps jobs also expect some prior experience, so I'm not sure how realistic that jump actually is.

TL,DR; If have 1 year to become employable as possible, should I target Data ENgineering, or just jump into Cloud/DevOps due to the overlap?

at winning arguments, confrontations, and getting the last laugh? 😭 Among Us, regular vids, doesn’t matter, somehow his word ALWAYS wins over everyone else’s. He is the only one who can control the room as seen in MoreSidemen where he hosts all the challenges too

The confidence + aura is actually unreal ngl 💀