Asking for a friend who is not on Reddit:

Friend has been looking to break out of engineering and into more DS/ML based work. Has lots of dev experience + good knowledge of ML learning from Kaggle, Coursera certifications etc….

Was offered a role as DS at MSFT, but through a vendor. Is wondering whether its a good idea or not:

Pros: Hiring manager and scientists from Vendor who interviewed him seemed like good people with strong backgrounds (He hasn’t any visibility to the MSFT FTEs he will be working with, only the vendor). Job is exactly what he wants to be doing. Would get exposure to some pretty cool systems.

Cons: A couple of his connections within MSFT are saying that it is a bad idea, vendors don’t get treated well. Chances are the work isn’t as interesting as the hiring manager makes it out to be, otherwise it wouldn’t be handed to vendor. For the same reason, won’t look good on resume either.

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Anybody have any experience or input on this?