Changing roles: Good or bad for your data career?

Published in

Data Science at Microsoft

7 min readAug 9, 2022

I have changed roles many times in my career. In my six years since graduating from college, I have worked at five different companies, having seven different roles (all related to data)! Now that I’m almost three months into my newest role as a Senior Data and Applied Scientist at Microsoft, I’m taking a moment to reflect on how changing jobs has affected my data career — both the good and the bad — and share my thoughts with you in this article.

I do want to acknowledge the privilege that I have as a US citizen working in the US in that I am able to change roles without worrying about visa or immigration challenges.

The good

Higher compensation: It is no secret that one of the ways to pursue faster increases to your salary is to change companies — I have definitely seen people post about it on LinkedIn! By changing roles, I have been able to negotiate higher compensation, and turn down opportunities that did not meet my salary expectations. (This might also be a sample bias because people are less likely to change roles for the same or lower pay, so keep that in mind!)
Pigeonhole prevention: Data roles have some of the most transferable skills of any job. Still, I personally know people in data roles who have stayed at one company for an extended time and yet feel they will have to take a title or salary step down if they change industries. Because I have changed roles, companies, and industries so many times, I now feel comfortable going into interviews in a variety of industries because at least one of my previous experiences will relate. Additionally, I’ve demonstrated that I am able to learn new businesses quickly, which brings me to my next advantage…
Growth mindset: According to the Harvard Business Review, a growth mindset is having the belief that your talents can continue to develop through hard work, learning from others, and strategies. On the other hand, a fixed mindset is having the belief that talent is an innate gift, which may lead to spending less energy on learning. Because I have changed companies, departments, industries, tech stacks, and stakeholders so many times, I am confident in my ability to continue growing my talents and I am confident in my growth mindset.
Learning: With a growth mindset comes learning! It has been so cool to learn about credit cards, television ratings, online retail, store operations, marketing analytics, SaaS, and cloud services. I have also learned different coding languages, tech stacks, analytical techniques, data visualization best practices, and communication styles. And I get paid while doing it!
Broader perspective: With a diverse set of experiences, I am able to pull in different solutions from my personal background that other people on the team might not have known about. Maybe it’s a type of software that I used at another company — or an analytical technique that was common in my previous role! I almost always have a creative idea for solving a problem because I have seen so many problems solved in so many different ways.
Choosing my own work: Every time I start getting ready for a transition, I do some self-reflection. I inventory what I like about my current role, what I do not like about my current role, what I miss about previous roles, what I have seen in the industry that I think is cool and exciting, and how I have been spending my free time. With this information, I am able to pursue only those roles that I am excited about and interested in, and that means I get to choose the type of work I will be doing.
Expanding my network: One question I usually ask in any interview is “what is your favorite part about your team or company?” and more than 60 percent of the time the answer is “the people.” And I do not think anyone is lying! I have met amazing people on every team that I have been on! In fact, I invited at least two people from every company that I’ve worked at to my wedding. One of the things I am most excited about when changing roles is getting to meet a new set of amazingly talented and passionate people.
Interviewing skills: I’m able to keep my interview skills sharp, I know my personal brand and story, and I know the best ways to represent my past experiences. The first time I changed companies was two and a half years after I started at the first place I worked — a company for which I had not interviewed since my internship with them a year before I started! As a result, I had not touched my resume or practiced interviewing in more than three and a half years. My first interview was bad. Really bad. I spent hours prepping my resume, practicing interview questions, talking with connections of connections at the company to answer my questions, and when I got to the interview I did pretty well on the behavioral interview questions. But when they asked whether I had any questions, I said “no” because I had already answered them all during my extensive preparation. Big mistake! Because I didn’t have any questions, I’m pretty sure I came across as having no interest in the role and not having done any prep! I talked to a mentor about how badly I flopped. He gave me the advice to take a recruiting call once a quarter and try to get a job offer once a year to keep my interviewing skills sharp and understand my value in the market. His advice has helped me be prepared when I get interviews at companies that I am really excited about (like Microsoft!)

The bad

Missed compensation: Didn’t I just say that one of the “goods” involved higher compensation?! Yes — but you must be careful because it is not all about the salary. By leaving a company, you may have to give up unvested stock, an unvested employer retirement plan match, year-end bonuses, tuition reimbursement — and perhaps you might even have to pay back a sign-on bonus or relocation package. Plus, if you join a new company too late in a fiscal or calendar year, you may not qualify for all benefits or bonuses. It is important to understand the full value of what you may be giving up when you go into negotiations for a new role.
Loss of advocates, reputation, and network: When you leave a company, you are also leaving behind the people, the relationships you have formed, the reputation you built, the knowledge of “who’s who in the zoo,” to whom to go for what, and more. It can be hard to make connections in a new company. You will need to spend time building up your relationships and reputation again, which leads me to my next point…
More ramp up: You will obviously be ramping up on a new industry, company, department, and subject area. But you will also be ramping up on so much more than you expected, most of which is not transferable between companies. This includes but is not limited to learning a new tech stack, a new communication stack (Slack versus Teams versus email), new coding languages and best practices, a new company culture, new terminology and acronyms, a new performance review process, all new people to meet, all new insurance to understand, a new organization structure to navigate, a new system for requesting access, a new place to raise support tickets, and so much more! All this ramp up takes time, which brings me to my next point…
Fewer promotions: Because you spend so much time onboarding instead of doing, it takes time before you can execute on a project and make an impact. Because of that, it takes time to build your reputation and an even longer time to gain advocates in the organization. This means it may be unlikely you will be promoted as quickly as you would have been if you had stayed in the same role or company. It can be really hard watching former coworkers get promoted to higher titles; I recently saw some people that I started with out of college get promoted to director. I try not to compare myself to others because it is not productive, and I try to remind myself that we just have different experiences and have taken different career paths.
The grass isn’t always greener: Especially when you are running from a role instead of running toward a role, you might find that the new role you take is not as amazing as it sounded in the interview. Just as you are selling yourself in an interview, the interviewer is selling the role. You can ask all the questions that you want, but you might not see the problems until you get there. Maybe it’s bad data quality, or bad data documentation, or insufficient portfolio monitoring, or tough stakeholders, or something else! Sometimes you may change roles and realize that many aspects of your old role that you disliked might actually be better than the bad parts of a new role.

I am happy to say that almost three months into my new role at Microsoft, I can assert with confidence that the “good” of this transition has outweighed the “bad.”

Have you changed companies or roles? If so, what did I miss? I would love to hear what you think in the Comments section below.

Are you interested in changing roles? If so, make sure to check out my other articles listed immediately below.

Writing a resume for a data science role

After reviewing dozens of resumes, I often give the same advice to most people. This article summarizes my most…

medium.com

Networking 101: Make the Most Out of Your LinkedIn Connection Requests

LinkedIn is an incredible professional resource. I personally use it to keep up with my network, follow new people who…