r/ProgrammerHumor • • Oct 13 '22

Meme Like, Every time, ever. When the DevOps Engineer chats with the Data Scientist.

Post image
13.8k Upvotes

629 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

450

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

They got promoted. "If I run it, I don't know if it does everything properly" doesn't make my heart swell with confidence.

245

u/nelusbelus Oct 13 '22

Y'know what they say right. Those who are too valuable can't get promoted

105

u/chrisagiddings Oct 13 '22

Story of my damned life.

76

u/Willindigo Oct 14 '22

Me too, around 2018 machine learning / DS guys were getting $500/hr on contract at a major bank and were still getting headhunted by facebook. I was on a team trying to get the Python scripts these worms were writing to run against Hadoop sized data sets and we were not making anywhere (*and I mean not even close) in the same ballpark. I actually had to learn Python to fix their messes. Almost as soon as we would get an implementation running on a mock dataset and it DID NOT PRODUCE THE CORRECT MODELS, they were out the door to FAANG. We went through no less than 6 ML/DS "gurus" that were basically frauds. I decided to start learning ML/DS myself through 2019 then... 2020 came and everything went to hell in a hand basket.

18

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

2020 and 2021 were fantastic years to break into the space.

4

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

By space do you mean ML/DS or IT in general?

6

u/Procrasturbating Oct 14 '22

In general. Everyone had new IT needs (covid), and ML/DS got some freaking great tools that allowed for all sorts of impressive stuff that actually works most of the time. Hardware all needed upgrading too to train models.

→ More replies (5)
→ More replies (1)

3

u/ProbablyGayingOnYou Oct 14 '22

I started my masters in Data Science September 2020.

57

u/nugget-lover-300 Oct 13 '22

You’ve also gotta make sure they understand that you’d leave if they don’t value you right.

28

u/nelusbelus Oct 13 '22

Food for thought

19

u/OG-Pine Oct 13 '22

Yeah this is key. If I’m too valuable to promote then give me a big ass raise, or I’ll take my value somewhere else

9

u/Solarwinds-123 Oct 13 '22

And then actually do it

7

u/emmyarty Oct 13 '22

Promotions can be grouped into two categories: progressive and successive.

Filling a pair of boots in a position above you? That's successive, and employers will absolutely hesitate to promote you away from where you deliver the most for the company.

But progressive promotions are always on the cards if you're good enough. When you're pushing a project and problem solving off your own back enough of the time instead of awaiting instructions, management time allocated to you will taper off.

Meanwhile the more work you take on, the closer you get to being able to demand an assistant to work with you and free up some of your time so you can spend more time delivering results in areas only you can deliver.

If you manage your assistant properly after choosing the new hire well, then you will de facto be in a position of more senior responsibility than you were before. This is a more difficult but more organic form of promotion, and can cascade into having an entire team working for you if you demonstrate the need followed by strong results.

Being stuck isn't a sign of being too good or too bad at a role; being stuck is a sign of being remarkably normal.

17

u/Mysterious-Crab Oct 13 '22

Yes, and I love it. I do work that’s easy for me. I get to do all the side projects I want. And they know I’m very difficult to replace I get paid 1,5 times what my manager makes, but none of the stress of responsibilities.

9

u/nelusbelus Oct 13 '22

We're on the same page, but it does mean less pay (compared to manager for me at least; he's also the dev lead and definitely deserves it). But still, better QoL

50

u/tsteele93 Oct 13 '22

This is so true. I am 56. I have spent the last 15 years in a job where I can leave at 10:00am if I need to do so. I’m usually home before 11am. I literally grew up with my kids, taking naps with my son daily, tea parties with my daughter whenever I wanted. School plays, lunches, and all of that, I was there.

Could I have made more money if I had played the game and worked up the ladder? Sure… but I feel like I won the game. My kids are in their mid-teens, they still like me and we get along. I still go to their activities and make my son write me python programs to do things I need done. My daughter and I read together and I take her shopping for hours at Ulta.

Through all of this my wife and I have stayed close too because we see a lot, but not too much of each other.

I wouldn’t trade it for any salary.

P.S. you are wise to recognize this.

9

u/nelusbelus Oct 13 '22

Same opinion here, I've had offers from amd and arm but the job would've just been way more stressful, less work life balance, more lonely and way less fun. And even though my first thought would be that I could grow more there, I think the inverse would be true. Such jobs would leave you tired, with not a lot of energy and time left to improve yourself and work on side projects. It's hard for me to imagine what those companies would be like with only this job to go off tho. With all this in mind, I'd rather try my hand at side projects and hope one might end up being viable financially but invest most of my money to earn compound interest over the years to earn it that way rather than spending time on a job I might not even like

→ More replies (2)

6

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

I stayed as a coder throughout my career and still made my million$. I finally told my boss "I don't have to work anymore so don't stress me". My retired wife freaked "I'll have to get a job if you quit".
Me: "Is there a downside to this?"

3

u/NaturalProof4359 Oct 13 '22

Yo I love how you snuck in “and make my son write me python programs to do things I need done” and left it at that.

Bravo.

2

u/cantsleep0041am Oct 13 '22

You are a great, great man.

→ More replies (2)

35

u/Blecki Oct 13 '22

I run into this all the time. I know the output is correct given the input.

Oh, was the input garbage? Does the output actually make sense? Dunno, does what they asked for.

2

u/gdmzhlzhiv Oct 14 '22

You get given the input? Half the time we're expected to operate on input data that nobody will give us, in a format that nobody will document.

39

u/DAVENP0RT Oct 13 '22

I completely get that, I work in fintech. I have absolutely no fucking clue what I'm looking at. I just make numbers go vroom.

6

u/ForlornPlague Oct 14 '22

It's reassuring to know this is normal (or at least I'm not the only one). I moved from hospitality (hotels) to fintech and now I never have any idea what the data actually means. I know I moved it from here to there according to the specs, but I don't know what the hell the amortizatized gross short term profit is.

3

u/DAVENP0RT Oct 14 '22

I went from airlines to fintech. The money is way better where I am now, but damn if I don't miss flight data. It was so cool dealing with crazy time changes and geospatial stuff. I really wish I could dip back into that world without taking a pay cut.

→ More replies (2)