In this issue of career intelligence newsletter
- Anatomies of Amazon and Google Data Scientist Offers
- "I'm 40 years old. Am I too old to join Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Apple as SDE, TPM or PM?"
- Cannot miss tech industry news
- Mega 1-on-1 career coaching course: From Employee to Executive
- Check out other career guide books I have written
- A quote I'm pondering
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Anatomies of Amazon and Google Data Scientist Offers
Data Scientist is one of the fastest growing careers in the world today. Many people with strong math, statistics and engineering backgrounds have pivoted their careers to Data Science to get into the doors of top firms such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. for better career prospect and higher pay. Today I’m sharing with you one Amazon Data Scientist offer and one Google Data Scientist offer. (Disclaimer: I have changed the data slightly to protect confidentiality but both the numbers and structure of the compensation reflect the current reality of Amazon and Google offers.)
Let’s start with a recent Amazon Data Scientist Offer
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Job title: Data Scientist
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Level: 5
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# of years of work experience: 5
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Base Salary: $150,000
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Year 1 sign-on bonus: $45,000
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Year 2 sign-on bonus: $40,000
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Restricted Stock Units: $120,000 worth of RSUs
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RSU vesting schedule: 5%/15%/40%/40%
Total Compensation:
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Year 1: $201,000
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Year 2: $208,000
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Year 3: $198,000
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Year 4: $198,000
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Total: $805,000
Now, let’s take a look at a recent Google Data Scientist offer:
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Job title: Data Scientist, Engineering
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Level: 4
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# of years of work experience: 5
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Base Salary: $160,000
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Year 1 sign-on bonus: $40,000
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Yearly performance based bonus: 15%
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Restricted Stock Units: $400,000 worth of RSUs
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RSU vesting schedule: 25%/25%/25%/25%
Total Compensation:
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Year 1: $324,000
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Year 2: $284,000
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Year 3: $284,000
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Year 4: $284,000
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Total: $1,176,000
Observations:
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Data Scientists are compensated well. Both examples are from relatively junior Data Scientists with about 5 years of professional experience.
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Are Data Scientists paid more or less than SDEs or TPMs at the same level? In my last newsletter, I shared an Amazon level 5 TPM offer with total compensation of $790,000 over 4 years. In this example, the Amazon level 5 Data Scientist total compensation over 4 years is $805,000. I’d say they are comparable.
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In this example, Google pays better than Amazon due to three reasons: 1) Google offered more Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) with a more generous vesting schedule 2) Google offers 15% performance based bonus each year while Amazon doesn’t have performance based bonus. Amazon does offer sign-on bonus for the first two years. 3) Google offers higher base salary. However, these two candidates have very different professional and educational backgrounds. So, this is not exactly an apple-to-apple comparison. So, I wouldn’t draw a conclusion that Google’s Data Scientist offer is higher than Amazon’s Data Scientist offer in general. It really depends on the specific candidate and job description.
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If you have strong quantitative and analytical skills and are looking into Data Science careers, I definitely recommend you to explore further. It’s a lucrative career option and it will become even more important as big data is playing an increasingly bigger role in the world. With that said, Data Scientists tend to face a career inflection point about 7-15 years into their career -- should they stay in Data Science or move to something else? You can look into options such as Product Management, TPM, or Marketing (due to your superb data analytic skills). The good news is that a Data Scientist job gives you a strong foundation and flexibility to move into other areas. It could serve as a great career stepping stone.
Need help to nail your upcoming interview with Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft or other tech firms? Sign up for my 1-on-1 personalized interview coaching programs. You can reply this email or check out my coaching page with details, a list of recent job offers, and client testimonials. Additionally, I also offer customized coaching for career transition, getting unstuck, and navigating corporate politics. Reply this email for more information.
"I'm 40 years old. Am I too old to join Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Apple as SDE, TPM or PM?"
I got this question a lot. People like to say that the Silicon Valley and high tech industry in general is young people's game. This is a topic that I can write an entire book about. Today, I'm going to share with you the cliff note version of my take on this topic.
Age discrimination definitely exist in the tech industry. Unfortunately, life is not fair, and we have to deal with it.
Economics works against older workers -- your compensation are higher than younger coworkers who can be as productive as you are. And you are more likely to have health issues than younger folks.
With that said, I have helped folks in their 50s and even 60s to land jobs at Amazon, Google, etc. Here is what they have in common:
1) Age is a just a number to them. They believe in their ability, skills, and what they have to offer. If you feel you're too old, you already lose half of the battle.
2) They keep their skills very sharp. They have unique skill set that give them an edge in the job market.
3) They tend to work on B2B products/services. They have deep domain knowledge and they understand how enterprise customers work. Instead of competing against recent grads to land a job at Direct-to-Consumer company such as Facebook, they focus on complex, B2B products such as AWS, Google Cloud, ERP, CRM, etc.
4) They don't stay at the same company for 15 or 20 years They move around every 3-5 years to gain new skills, and continue to grow their network.
5) They continue to invest in themselves. They hire personal trainers to stay fit and healthy. They work with Nutritionist to clean up their eating which makes a big difference. They work with executive coach like myself to sharpen their skills and address their weaknesses. They're getting a little bit better everyday.
Finally, I'd like to share with you a quote from my hero Charlie Munger:
“I think the right strategy for the great mass of humanity is to specialize,” Munger said. “Nobody wants to go to a doctor that’s half proctologist and half dentist, you know? So, the ordinary way to succeed is to narrowly specialize.”
Key Industry News Headlines
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Past Email Newsletter archive are now available
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Check out best-selling books I have written
A quote I'm pondering
"The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun."
"I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
"I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity."
-- John D. Rockefeller.
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Cheers,
Andrew Franklin
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