I have an offer on to leave my role as Data Scientist and become a software evangelist / account manager (DevRel). What do you think about platform evangelists? It seems like I'll see the world traveling to conferences and talking about the tech I love. But forget about pull requests and coding... And it seems like one of my OKRs will be about how many companies start using the the APIs, SDKs and Frameworks. Also forget the raputation I built in my current company as a good data scientist to jump into something I've never done before... Any insights? Would this be a good move if it is a FAANG company? What if it is Databricks or Dataiku? TC now 250k Tc new 350k
If youâd rather do that type of work itâs the right choice. If youâre just TC hunting stay DS or even better go MLE.
I think MLE will be the path should I regret being an evangelist. Do you think there will be a way back or career killer?
Any choice you make wonât kill your career. It just stalls out the path you move from. If you go work as something other than a DS your DS progression stalls bc youâre not doing the work right?
Poll
I think a Poll won't do justice to the nuances... TC, conferences, etc.
What is software evangelist?
Can build a great network if itâs tools you are truly passionate about, but think about pinning your reputation on one specific stack if itâs just for the money
Interesting. By one specific stack you mean specialising into one of the many APIs and SDKs?
I just mean so many start ups now (eg MLOps, data observability). If the evangelist role is something small, think about what happens if all your talks and social media posts are promoting a tech that doesnât âwin outâ or that you come to not believe in over time
Do you want to be a glorified sales engineer?
Yes... I guess if the work is fun and TC is good. I think I will have more action than in DS tbh altough I'll miss the maths
Whatâs wrong with sales engineering? Got a buddy whoâs one with background in mech engineering, he was wfh for years even before COVID