I start to get into a motivational rut if all I'm doing is working on a list of technical things to complete. Engineering disciplines are some of the few degrees that provide you the ability to both directly solve other people's problems and have close customer contact - that was a major reason why software engineering attracted me as a career rather than just a hobby.
For junior and even mid-level engineers, your performance is generally evaluated on checklists of mundane shit. Code is passably neat and organized? Check. Code has and passes tests? Check. Feature checks requirements boxes? Check, check, check.
Especially at larger organizations, I've found that the dev role is very much of an "implementer", that your job is to take the design, spec, architecture and put it into place as close to the above as possible.
You're much less likely to be actually sorting out the why/how of the system.
Douglas Adams made his career reiterating the cliche engineers do not communicate with the customer.
I do have a technical degree. But I think my underlying problem is because of how I was brought up. I had strict parents and family members and was always told what to do. Questioning things was not something I was taught and I grew up to always follow the "rules".
And I think that has (kind of) led to my current state where without rules I struggle to make decisions.
>And I think that has (kind of) led to my current state where without rules I struggle to make decisions.
I worry that the newer generations brought up in zero tolerance environments will come late to questioning authority, if ever. Life is far more nuanced and negotiable than school and zero tolerance leads people to believe and folks like yourself who aren't equipped to think creatively in these situations have been robbed of a valuable skill.
[Edit] - people skills. One ex-military guy who was recruited into my team was asked by corporate HR how he would deal with 'difficult conversations'. His answer had to do with telling people / families that their best friends / relatives (soldiers under his command) had been killed in action, or persuading one of his squaddies not to marry the local prostitute. When I decided to step back from team leadership he was my first choice as my replacement, and later became one of the best bosses I've ever had.
Very cool example you have there. I'm keeping this filed on my Roam Research documents!
I’ll push back a lot and I’ve seen other much more senior technical people that will do the same. A lot of people just want to come to work, heads down coding, and then leave.
Sounds like there is more of a problem with how the army is asking verse what they expect. If they were more direct in what they wanted vs measuring some scenerio they created.
In short rigidity on the part of individuals combined with countervailing organizational goals to combatting same is the issue.
More of a PM
Firstly, it seems to me that the online course enabled you to reach top 3% of a Kaggle project which led to a series of career opportunities. However, I believe that being able to reach the top in Kaggle competition is not an easy feat. This kind of process is not really replicable especially for the people who are just starting out in Data Science. In that case, what would you recommend them to do?
And secondly, what is the end goal of a data scientist or at least for you as a data scientist? Would it be going into research? Continue to climb the ladder till you reach the top of the company? Data science and engineering in general are great as a form of intellectual challenge. However, personally sometimes I feel that there is a lack of meaning in the thing that I am doing as engineer/data scientist (especially if the culture of the company is very bottom-line driven). Just want to hear your thoughts! :)
I had almost the exact same experience going from a psychology degree, to coding in SF, to heading up analytics for the Trail Blazers. Luck, self-study, and Kaggle! Really cool to hear that someone else also took the psychology to data analysis route.
I always thought that those kinds of things are useful and should be effective but (online) anecdotes suggest they are not. Seems like there is a missing step and the author was able to find that step. (Branded company work?)
It's not difficult, you just need to know that creating an artifact is not the end of your job--it needs to be used to benefit customers and generate value. Remember to measure the impact after your feature/system is launched.
I've seen many interview candidates struggle with this (missing step) too. Those that get past it were hungry enough to want it, as well as followed up with proper validation and measurement.
And that's assuming there at only technical considerations and not broader ones involving discussions with many other stake holders.
What is meant by “steep learning curve”? https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6209/what-is-mea...
I don't mean to be rude, just that it is interesting.
"How hard is it to learn Haskell?" Not "How much time does it take to learn Haskell?"
For instance, people will say some things are easy to learn, hard to master (playing Go). Other things are hard to learn but once you have, you're close to mastering them (kinds of problems that have a trick - like integrating e^ax cos bx).
With regard to presentation and speaking, I had great leaders around me who provided candid feedback the presentation was off-point, too long, or had to be re-ordered (e.g., when presenting to non-tech folks, results before methodology). It was also useful to "rehearse" any conference presentations at meet-ups and get feedback.
Feedback to improve written communication is harder to come by. Few people feedback on your design documents or reports. For this, I find blogging and seeking feedback from writers whose writing I enjoy to help the most.
I think I would have landed a super nice position if I wasn't a socially inept person. Bitterness and "reality" or "truths" won't help us, so these days I'm just leaning on being reasonable and as human as possible because nobody likes a person who's constantly pointing out flaws and telling people they are horrible. (thankfully I've never in my life told anyone they are bad at something, at the end of the day this field you can keep improving yourself. I imagine in a field of medicine if you mess up too much that's it for you)
Written communication: blog, short stories, editing others' work
Oral: practice public speaking, either by volunteering in your own context whenever possible (most shy away - you stand out for volunteering to speak) or build confidence and skills outside, eg in Toastmasters.
i experience many things similar with yours.
- progress plateau is scary. whenever i experience this, I try very hard to get out of it.
> I needed practice too. The data team wanted to launch an internal newsletter to spread awareness—I volunteered. Someone had to visit overseas markets to do a data science roadshow—I volunteered. We wanted to present our work at conferences—I volunteered.
this is where I'm currently at.
> In year two I was internally transferred to the workforce analytics team, working to forecast job demand and build a job recommendation engine to move people within the organization.
I'm hearing this a lot from friends.
> On the side, I continued self-learning. I picked up Python (love it) and took classes in machine learning. Spark, a shiny (pun intended) big data framework was emerging and provided free courses on EdX—I devoured these too.
I'm currently noticing this myself. I'm devouring content on Hack The Box. I'm currently making 16 hour days and am at 200+ hours within 2 weeks, and devoured half of their active boxes.
You don't need a background once you have 16 hour per day (every day) determination. There are people who need more than sheer determination, but enough don't. They simply need Elon Musk level determination.
> They were struggling with accurate product categorization and had heard about my sharing on the Kaggle competition.
Use the right status symbols. It used to be university, now it is being at the top of a competition.
> My family and closest friends thought it was risky. However, deep down, I knew I would regret not accepting the offer.
A potential pitfall that he avoided. I've been heavily hit by this and kind of stalled my life for a year. So yea, he could've listened to them. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. He didn't and pushed forward.
> The failure and embarrassment was very public. But so was the recovery and success.
One that I know from my personal circles: go to a public embarrassment that isn't yours and no one dares to touch and make it into a success. It's not easy to do but if you can do it, then do it, in the right company this will transform your life. Or at least, it transformed the lives that I know of whom did it. They didn't do it consciously though, it's upon reflection that they realize.
> But once in the field, there were PhDs with more experience around me—why did I get promoted above them?
When I read this I'm simply thinking that he didn't get promoted above them. Being a VP is something different, I imagine, than being a data scientist, so different skills are at play. Yes, you need technical competence but you also need VP skills. Let's see what he says.
> The measurable value I created was 3x that of an average data scientist.
Well, he could also communicate that. Could the avg data scientist do that? I don't know, I bet half of them couldn't or wouldn't care.
> I was promoted to be a role model and to mentor the team to deliver and communicate better.
Like I said, VP skills.
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To close:
I think he's right in his assessment, simply by looking at my successful friends, family and acquaintances and by constantly asking what they do.
I'd summarize his success as:
A) Get in (I'm struggling super hard at this part, "you can problem solve but have too little experience" is what I get, it's depressive, it's a key stage)
B) Create trust with everyone
C) Be the best pick for the new position out of your team
From those key stages one can distill that technical skill is initially important and communication later.
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If anyone wants to hire me as a mix between a hacker and programmer anywhere in the world let me know! I have 1 year of work experience in software engineering (excluding the bootcamp I taught for a year). My Hack The Box profile is looking to be more impressive every day.
The most impressive candidates can demo something they've deployed. This demonstrates the ability to apply what you've learned AND learn the rest of the stuff as needed (e.g., spin up EC2, build basic front end, maintenance, etc.). The latter is more important and gives confidence that you take ownership and likely can do the same (i.e., end-to-end with results) in the company.
On the second point: having meaning in work differs from person to person. Some people enjoy pushing the envelope (research), others enjoy staying hands-on (individual contributor, IC), while some big picture thinkers enjoy coordinating (PMs). It's helpful to think back on what gave you the greatest satisfaction and work with your leaders to be a role that lets you perform your best.
I find it most fulfilling to build data products that are useful, relative to generating tons of revenue. I would be equally happy as an IC doing the hands-on or leading a small team and mentoring them to become more effective.
There is a high chance of getting hired if you have practical skills. Most candidates are just trying their luck, coming to the interview with abysmal knowledge and experience, even when they have PhD's.
This comment makes wild assumptions, doesn't assume best intentions, and really just makes `brenden2` sound like a nasty person. Yet here it is, top comment on the front page.
Nice work OP! You are flexing a very unique set of muscles (technical + leadership + communication + ambition) that very few people have. You will go far in life.
My personal goal is for my beliefs and my participation in a community to above all be accurate. If the fact-based conclusions aren’t very pleasant, that is a function of the state of the world, not the state of participation.
Overall it results in a fairly balanced forum.
None of this is new - it's happened to all industries after they became sufficiently mainstream. Take a look at aviation - at first it was the wild west at the beginning of the century, then WW1 and WW2 brought some rapid advances, and in the last 70 years things have been relatively stale. Anyone dreaming of designing the next airliner today is a very different person from those who designed them at the beginning of that cycle.
I am not even saying there's anything wrong with all of this. As an industry matures and becomes more mainstream (aka, affects more people), we have to put some safety mechanisms in place. That means discussions become more about safety and less about achievement, and this attracts a fundamentally different group of people - more average, more bitter.
Kudos to the OP: just like syndacks, I am rooting for him and hope he'll use his enthusiasm to continue to shoot for the stars!
I would say this is true for all mid-management and up. Tech proficiency is largely irrelevant once you go into management.
The lack of tech proficiency is even an advantage: in the companies where I worked, it is people who sucked badly at the technical job they had, who were moved to management, hoping that they might be less useless there. They are happy, they are paid twice as much as others who could fulfil their tasks, so it must mean they're good at something (something difficult to assess otherwise so money must be the right measurement). And then, since it is almost impossible to differentiate between a good and a bad manager, they could thrive a few decades going up in those roles, jumping from a company to another, boasting about the number of projects they 'made' (which are naturally more numerous than for the people who actually worked deeply on them).
I'd love to say it's only prone in startups but it's been plaguing companies forever, especially small-medium sized ones where it's easier because the owner is probably hoping to find able hands, perhaps the huge ones have slightly better processes to counter this type of scenario.
Success is mostly based upon who you know and being at the right place at the right time. That's why it's disingenuous to suggest you can "teach" how to be successful with blog posts like this -- you can't teach someone how to be born into the right family so they can attend the right school and meet the right people.
I'd put it another way : it makes room for many people to participate in the social life by mean of work in the civil aviation.
So, from being a domain ruled by elite (of gifted or lucky or rich persons), it ends up a to be a domain of emancipation for big parts of society...
This lies in stark contrast to the three other managers I've had for any length of time, who have all been considerably more technical and considerably less good at those other things. They've been able to step in and help fight fires in a way that the above manager couldn't have, but they haven't been as good at keeping their part of the organization running smoothly. Thing is, the latter is a manager's job, and the former isn't.
I mostly see management and implementation as orthogonal skills, with the caveat that experience is industry-specific in both cases.
You seem to be agreeing with me then. Of course you can be a bad VP Data Scientist without knowing anything about data science!
The job of a Data Science leader at a growing company is 50% recruiting and 50% sitting in planning meetings. Even if you started with good IC knowledge after a few years your skills will be rusty as hell. So assuming you know nothing and trusting your team and delegating is going to work infinitely better than trusting your own out of date skills.
edit: And yes, this is from personal knowledge, I've held such titles before and I've had a lot of offers for other such titles.
edit2: As a corollary, promoting someone to management just because they're a good IC is a really bad idea. You want your top ICs to stay ICs if possible. You want your managers to be people who actually can manage and want to manage.
Good scientific skills never go out of date. Being a good data scientist is not the same thing as knowing the big data framework du jour.
I accept that in many cases people with the job title 'data scientist' do not have any scientific skills, but that's a different matter.