Ask HN: Should I focus on going deep or going wide career wise?

4 points by freddieoduks 6 years ago | 4 comments

Hi HN, so I currently work as a Junior Data Scientust for a fintech firm but one of my main goals is actually to start my own company soon. So at the moment I'm wondering whether I should focus on going deep and studying extra to keep to become a really good data scientist (currently I consider myself below average e.g I won't be able to get a DS job at a top hi-tech firm right now) or should I focus on going wide, maybe shifting towards a product management role to help me better prepare for life as a founder (even though I want to be technical I'm not sure I can ever get to the point of being a top 25% Data scientist/Coder but suspect I can do this with being a PM as it contains a wide range of skills that I think I have or can develop quickly). I'm not looking for someone to answer this directly but rather to give me a framework or mental model to use to make a decision.

Thanks!

charlesdm 6 years ago |

This is a decision that likely does not matter at all to the success of your company. The number one skill you're likely forgetting about now is sales.

You need to figure out how to talk to people and sell them things.

noir_lord 6 years ago | |

Not just selling them things but selling yourself first.

Before I was a full time programmer I was a salesman when I was young (I'm by nature an introvert so it wasn't anything that was natural, I had to learn to do it and I got good at it - The company I worked for I held the highest sales for the district and the 3rd highest average order value over the company (150ish locations)) and after a while I realised that 'people buy people' with the product often been secondary (turns out all those 'CTO made the choice over a round of golf with <IBM|Oracle"> sales manager' jokes have a basis of truth, they figured it out decades ago).

It's also something of an awkward truth in that as programmers we like to think we pick thinks for objective considered reasons rather than because we like the person pushing them but then I used to watch the tech industry go nuts after a Job's sales event and think..maybe not so much.

mooreds 6 years ago | |

100% this is a skill a founder team needs.

However, for the author of the question, I'd suggest going into product management or consulting if you want to prep for founder life. This will help you build the skills of finding a customer, discovering their pain and solving it.

That's the sales process in a nutshell.

freddieoduks 6 years ago | |

I mean in order to build the product it matters that you can actually build it yourself in the beginning no?