Career Advice
30F working as a data engineer here and feeling a bit stuck career-wise.
My current job pays very well and the work is relatively comfortable, but most of what I do is analytics/data modeling work. I’m increasingly worried that a lot of this layer of work will become heavily automated over the next 5–10 years with AI tooling.
On top of that, I’m not fully confident in my current company’s long-term trajectory, which is making me think more seriously about skill development and future-proofing my career.
I recently got 2 offers and I’m struggling to decide what to optimize for.
Offer A:
- ~30% pay cut
- technically very strong team
- opportunity to work on large-scale distributed systems/data platform problems
- I’d probably be one of the more junior engineers on the team, which is both exciting and intimidating
Offer B:
- ~20% pay cut
- scope feels less clear
- possibly more operational/firefighting work
- but potentially a lot more autonomy and room to shape things
Option C is staying where I am now. The pay is great, WLB is good, and I worked very hard to get to this compensation level. But I’m worried I’m optimizing too much for short-term comfort and not building skills that will compound long-term.
Curious what others would prioritize here:
- compensation?
- technical growth?
- team quality?
- autonomy?
- long-term defensibility in the AI era?
Especially interested in hearing from people who’ve made similar tradeoffs mid-career.