Joined company for ML role but doing business analysis work - keep job or find new one?

Product management Product management careers and networking
1

Hey folks, need some career advice here. I got my first corporate position at a consulting company recently. I studied math and computer science, and when they hired me they said I’d be working on their Machine Learning and Data Science team. This was exactly what I wanted since my goal is to become an ML engineer or data scientist. I wasn’t thrilled about consulting work since I like technical coding more than talking to clients, but the role sounded perfect.

Turns out they put me in their Business Intelligence and Analytics team instead. For the past month I’ve been making spreadsheets, writing reports, and doing business requirement documents. No programming at all, just Excel and Word basically.

I talked to people on my team and others, and they told me most projects here are making dashboards in PowerBI and business analysis stuff. Barely any actual data science or machine learning, maybe some ChatGPT integration projects sometimes. I’m still in my first 3 months so I haven’t talked to my boss about wanting more technical work yet.

I really don’t like what I’m doing right now and I’m not sure I’m even good at business analysis. But everything else about the job is nice - good pay for someone starting out, great office location, nice coworkers, can work from home sometimes, and decent benefits. Still, every day I think ‘I don’t want to come back tomorrow, this sucks.’

I can save most of my salary so I’m getting cloud certifications in my free time and planning to do some Kaggle competitions and personal ML projects. Problem is I don’t have much time since I work 9 to 5 and commute takes 2 hours daily, though some days I can work remote.

I know Python, C++, MATLAB and ML libraries like scikit-learn and TensorFlow from university (I have master’s in applied math), but I’ve never used them in real work projects. I understand the theory well but lack hands-on experience and don’t know much about data engineering.

The networking opportunities aren’t great either since our clients are mostly government agencies with old tech and people who don’t want to change anything. Usually with consulting you can get hired by clients later but I don’t see that happening here.

I’m not sure how long I want to wait this out. I’m 27 so still young enough to chase what I actually want to do, but I also know I’m not super early in my career anymore since I had some personal problems during college that slowed me down.

Can someone realistically move from business analyst consulting work to technical roles like data scientist or ML engineer? Should I stay for now or start looking for other jobs right away?

Any advice would be awesome, thanks!

2

Give it 6-12 more months while building your technical portfolio. You haven’t talked to your manager yet? Do that now - lots of consulting firms have real ML projects but you need to prove you can handle them first. Your stable income is actually perfect for this: keep grinding those cloud certs and Kaggle competitions since that’s what hiring managers look for. Don’t write off the business analysis stuff either - translating client problems into technical solutions matters for senior roles. But if you talk to leadership and you’re still stuck in Excel hell after 6 months, get out fast. Your math background helps, but this industry moves quickly and you can’t afford gaps in technical work.

3

honestly, start applying elsewhere now. you’re only 27 with a master’s degree - don’t waste time hoping they’ll suddenly give you ml work when they’ve already lied about the role. the longer you stay doing excel work, the harder it’ll be to break into real data science. use the stable paycheck to fund your job search, but don’t sit around waiting for something that probably won’t happen.

4

That daily grind feeling says it all! Your math master’s opens doors - don’t let spreadsheets kill that spark. Start networking on LinkedIn with real ML teams while you keep this steady paycheck. You’ve got the foundation, just need the right opportunity!

5

Been there - my “data engineer” role turned into SQL report monkey work too. Talk to your boss today, don’t wait. Frame it as wanting to add more technical value for clients, not just griping about spreadsheets. That 2-hour commute kills any side project time - can you get more remote days? The business stuff you’re learning isn’t completely worthless though. I’ve seen ML engineers build perfect models that solve the wrong problems because they don’t get the business side.