Part 3: “Essential ‘Unhelpful’ Tips for Career Success based on real story
Because You Just Can’t Succeed Without Them!;)
In Part 1, we discussed 13 essential tips to help you navigate your career. And we’re not done yet!
In Part 2, we discussed next set of tips (14 to 21) to help you navigate your career. And we’re not done yet!
Let’s check the next set of Tips!
In addition to Boston, we drove to Seattle every month as a family for Amazon conferences, meetings with colleagues, and other events. As usual, everything was top-notch.
By the way, I first encountered Amazon Alexa when speaking at the Enterprise Data World conference in Boston. It was my second time presenting at this conference; the first was in sunny San Diego. This time, however, it was early March and freezing cold. Speaking at the conference only grants a free ticket. The six-day conference costs $3,500, and speakers attend free but cover their own flights and hotel. I booked a tiny Airbnb room for $100 per night—a 2x2 meter space.
Tip 22: I may have mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again! If you’re serious about your career, say “yes” to every possible opportunity. It was uncomfortable for me for the first few years, but it’s become easier over time. Set yourself a goal—to speak at a meetup, user group, apply for a conference, or share your experience on Surfalytics.com!
Besides conferences, I enjoy doing other things. For instance, I led an Amazon Future Engineer Hour of Code session for my son’s 2nd-grade class, volunteered at a university, and spoke at a high school. I did everything I could. When people asked, “Why?” my answer was that I thought it might come in handy. Every opportunity opens doors to new connections and experiences. If you don’t put yourself out there, nothing will happen.
Tip 23: If you have kids and a family, always look for opportunities to bring them along on trips and conferences. It’s a valuable experience for kids (from ages 5-6 and up) and a great opportunity for your partner.
Communities at Amazon
I’ve already written about proactivity. Almost immediately at Amazon, I began building communities:
Amazon Tableau User Group – 3,000 users across Amazon who use Tableau. I answered every other question, organized meetings, and invited top-notch speakers.
BI Tech Talk – 100+ data teams from across Amazon. I also organized presentations with speakers from both Amazon and other companies.
All of this gave me a huge advantage—almost everyone working with data at Amazon knew me. It made switching teams or inviting a speaker from LinkedIn easy. Of course, it didn’t impact my salary, but I enjoyed connecting people and ideas.
Even now, there are people at Microsoft who remember me from when they worked at Amazon.
Tip 24: Always look for collaboration opportunities. Communities are a powerful tool for career growth. Don’t ignore them; create them, help others, and they’ll help you in return.
At Alexa, things went as usual: I did my work but didn’t get closer to a promotion, so I switched teams again. I spoke with teams from California and Seattle and started considering relocating to the U.S. I joined the Customer Behavior Analytics team and promised to relocate to Seattle in the fall of 2020. But I discovered that my Amazon stock grants had run out after four years, and I would have to move my family on a base salary of $130,000, which didn’t meet my needs. The minimum income for Seattle should be $200,000, with a good range being $300-350,000 (including stock), based on my research.
An important point: Amazon prohibits internal transfers from including a salary increase, meant to prevent people from hopping between teams. So each transition sets you back at least a year from a potential promotion.
Regarding bonuses, you’re awarded stock in shares. Multiply the stock price by the number of shares, and you get a nice number. But! When the vested date comes—the date the shares become yours—Canada takes half in taxes. So if you’re granted 20 shares, you only get 10. You can sell them or keep them, as I did. And if you originally had 10 shares at $600 each and they grew to $3,000 each, you’ll owe capital gains tax on $2,400 profit per share, paying 25% of that.
On paper, it looks nice, but in reality, you get much less. Don’t forget about Canada’s progressive income tax—the higher your earnings, the higher the rate. Taxes are lower in the U.S., but they have their own complications with healthcare and insurance.
Every time I was frustrated with my career progress, I’d start job hunting again. Interviewing is beneficial and keeps you sharp. I interviewed with Tesla for a Data Engineer position on their solar team but didn’t get the role. Then I interviewed with Lyft for a Data Engineering Manager role with a California salary of $400-450,000, including bonuses. Although I didn’t have managerial experience, I’d taken all the Amazon management courses. That didn’t work out either. They asked many questions about diversity and inclusion.
For Google, I didn’t even manage to schedule an interview. The recruiter disappeared after the first call. Google can afford to do that—if one good candidate slips away, another will come along.
Tip 25: You’re not the only candidate for the job. Top companies receive hundreds of applications, so try to apply early or seek other routes, like through connections. I applied to dozens of positions at Facebook and Google but received no response.
Eventually, though, recruiters from Facebook reached out to me about a Data Engineering Manager role. Here’s what the interview process looked like:
Phone Screen with the recruiter – Just a chat about the role, requirements, and my background.
Leadership Interview – A conversation with a manager, more like a behavioral interview, where they asked about leadership and conflict resolution. Amazon’s management courses had me well-prepared.
Technical Screening – Even for a manager role, it consisted of three parts: SQL exercises (15 minutes for five tasks), Python (15 minutes for five tasks), and Data Modeling (15 minutes).
To be honest, 15 minutes is very little time. I completed 4/5 SQL tasks and 3/5 Python tasks (which I was proud of, as I hadn’t worked with it much). However, I really struggled with data modeling. The question was simple: imagine you work at LinkedIn; create a model to answer five specific questions. You should start top-down (from business questions to fact tables), but I went bottom-up (from all source data at LinkedIn to fact tables) with only seven minutes left. I also have a theory that North America has a strong lobby of Indian professionals, and I often see teams predominantly made up of them. While their experience and knowledge can vary, my chances felt 50/50. In the end, I didn’t get the job, but it was a great learning experience.
Tip 26: Every failed interview is a huge opportunity for growth. You step out of your comfort zone, prepare, and learn something new. Don’t miss out on this chance. It’s worth it.
Working for “The Man” or for Yourself
Amazon was the pinnacle of my career aspirations. Early on, I couldn’t have dreamed of working there. But after a while, I started to wonder—what’s next? You come to realize that you’re working for “the man,” even if he’s the richest one in the world, Jeff Bezos.
Before the pandemic, I was trying to run two businesses—a consulting company and a meal prep delivery service.
I won’t dive too deeply into my business here. I’ll just say this: if you manage to create a business, service, or product that brings in an income comparable to what you’d earn working for “the man,” you’re on the right track. I didn’t quite succeed. I feel like to build something truly remarkable, you need to fail at 10-15 ventures first. I’ve only failed at two so far. Eventually, burnout set in—that loss of interest in what you’re doing. I was juggling so much at once, and after a few years, I felt I hadn’t achieved anything in return. My career at Amazon hadn’t taken off, my consulting didn’t fly, and my energy was depleted. With the pandemic and working from home, I’d spend entire days at my computer without producing anything.
Another consideration about running your own business is that if you really want to make money, you’ll likely need venture funding, with hopes of an IPO or acquisition. But once you get investors, you’re often back to working for “the man.” Going public is like dreaming your child will make it to the Olympics after joining a sports team.
Then there’s family. I have three kids, and chasing a dream at the expense of family is a high price not everyone is willing to pay. In the end, working for a good company with a decent salary, benefits, and stock options isn’t so bad. But there’s one key aspect—financial planning. A tried-and-true method is investing.
That time we purchased our second home in Greater Vancouver around 2020. In addition, we were able to keep our first home and rent it out.
The approach is as old as time. Of course, to make this work, you need a bit of capital—thanks to Amazon for that. Amazon employees were genuinely able to improve their lives thanks to the company’s growth. Here’s a recent article: Jeff Bezos shared a note from a couple who bought 2 shares of Amazon in 1997—and are now using the proceeds to buy a house after the company’s 172,499% post-IPO growth.
Disclaimer: Investing in real estate before 2021 was great advice. We even ranked 3rd in Vancouver. However, as soon as interest rates rose, all the nice aspects of being a landlord vanished. So now, I’d probably rather invest in the stock market and ETFs.
Despite the company being quite tough and demanding, the experience gained there is invaluable.
Tip 27: It may sound simple, but avoid living pay check to pay check. Always think about the future and make an effort to preserve and grow what you have.
Job Change – From Amazon to Microsoft
When I joined my third team at Amazon, I’d promised to relocate to Seattle. But then I realized my stock grants had run out, and no new ones were given. As I mentioned, it’s possible to live on $130,000 in the U.S. with a big family, but it’s not the lifestyle we wanted.
Since I would occasionally apply for jobs on a whim, I applied for a position at Microsoft in Vancouver in May 2020. I didn’t even read the job description (we’d figure it out later, as they say). I applied in May, and they called me at the end of July—2.5 months later. By then, I had almost forgotten about it. The interview process took about a month. From what I gathered, Microsoft doesn’t move too quickly in hiring. The interview process went something like this:
Phone Interview with HR
Phone Interview with the manager
These were essentially phone screens. I passed and moved on to the main interview, which is typically an all-day event, but in my case, it was split over two days. Here’s how it went:
Interview with the Product Manager and Director – This was a behavioral interview with situational questions. They asked a lot about conflict resolution and collaboration with other teams. I explained everything in detail, trying to identify any Amazon Leadership Principle hints and tailor my answers accordingly.
Interview with a Principal and Senior Engineer – They had me solve a statistics problem using SQL and then asked me to design an analytics architecture for Big Data and Streaming on AWS or Azure.
Interview with the Data Science and BI team – I shared my ML project experience from my last team, which they found interesting.
After that came the negotiation phase. Based on LinkedIn insights, I found that a Senior Software Engineer in Canada could earn around CAD 220,000 in 2020. But as I’ve seen before, negotiating with Canadian companies can be challenging due to strict limits—they budged only slightly. Either way, I was already “drowning” (burning out) at Amazon, and this was the perfect time for a change. I wasn’t planning to relocate to Seattle either.
In November, I started working at one of the Xbox studios in Vancouver. They set me up with a gaming computer and Xbox, and part of my onboarding process involved playing Xbox games.
When comparing the cultures of Amazon and Microsoft, Microsoft wins on several fronts. The work-life balance, insurance, and benefits are much better.
Comparing AWS and Azure as technologies, I find AWS analytics solutions significantly better suited to my needs.
In terms of salary, Amazon generally pays more. But as you may have gathered, that wasn’t my case. To raise my salary and position, I had to use Tip #4 again—change jobs.
Looking at the market, it’s clear that in Seattle, Amazon and Microsoft employees frequently switch between the two companies. I know people who left Amazon for Microsoft and vice versa, and I’m sure each move came with a raise.
Bonus Round
I almost forgot to mention another interview. Around the same time I was considering Microsoft’s offer, I saw an opening from one of my favorite companies—Slalom (a leading IT consulting firm focused on innovative analytics, design, and development). As I described in my post about my consulting venture, Rock Your Data, Slalom was a source of inspiration for me and served as a benchmark.
They were opening an office in Vancouver and looking for a Director of Data Engineering. It sounded like a dream job, so I applied. I had several interviews with directors from the U.S., and I made a good impression. They weren’t put off by my experience as Data Practice Director at Rock Your Data and my time at Amazon. The only catch was that I knew the technical details a little too well for a director role. A director typically isn’t expected to have such in-depth technical knowledge.
In the end, they told me I didn’t quite fit the director role but offered me a position as a Principal Consultant with a salary 30% higher than Microsoft’s. I consulted my mentor from Amazon, who said not to think twice—go to Microsoft. I was also disappointed by the fact that I’d applied for a director role but received a consultant offer instead.
On the one hand, I was pleased that my consulting experience truly paid off, but on the other, I was disappointed not to land the role I wanted.
Tip 28: Everything happens for the best.
Maybe I’m earning a bit less at Microsoft, but I feel good, and I can see my interest in my work coming back.
Tip 29: A high salary isn’t always the main criterion. Consider the long-term prospects, how marketable you’ll be in a year, and whether the role is stable. Will it benefit your mental health and family life? (In my case, consulting and frequent travel clearly weren’t family-friendly.)
This is the ending of my post and tips that I wrote originally in 2021. 100% they are all valid now and it gives your framework to navigate job market.
I would also add couple more tips.
Tip 30: If you have a choice between working for a public company or a startup, set your priorities. If job security and high pay are important, a public company is the better choice, as it offers RSUs, bonuses, and other benefits—they can afford to pay well. If compensation is less important to you and you’d rather focus on developing technical skills, a startup can be a good option. But here’s an important point: don’t join a startup solely because it might go public. The chances of a startup going to IPO are usually very low. Make your decision wisely without counting on the IPO factor.
Continuing to share my experience
I am still learning in the field of data engineering and building Analytics and Data Engineering solutions and still sharing my knowledge and found excellent way via Surfalytics by helping people to leverage 15 years of my experience for the Data Jobs and gain competitive advantage at the Surfalytics.
Tip 31: The more you give to others, the more you receive in return.