Month: April 2017

Is it too late to become a good Data Scientist?

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If you’re looking for career change, that’s never too late!

If you’re looking to learn something new, that’s never too late!

If you’re looking to continue learning and go deeper in data science, that’s never too late!

If you don’t like Software engineering and want to switch to something else, that’s never too late!

…

But if you are after the “Data Science” gold rush, then you did miss the first wave! You are late.

…

But seriously, you should apply first-principles thinking to your career strategy and ideally not jump to whatever’s “hot” because by the time you get on that train, it’s usually too late.

VIEW QUESTION ON QUORA

As a data scientist, are you dissatisfied with your career? Why?

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As a data scientist, I am not dissatisfied. I love what I do!

But I might have gotten lucky since I got into this for the right reasons. I was looking for a role that had a little bit of both tech & business and so few years back, Business Intelligence and Data Analysis seemed like a great place to start. So I did that for a while. Then industry evolved and the analytics maturity of the companies that I worked also evolved and so worked on building predictive models and became what they now call “Data scientist”.

It doesn’t mean that data science is the right role for everyone.

One of my friends feels that it’s not that “technical” and doesn’t like this role. He is more than happy with data engineer role where he gets to build stuff and dive deeper into technologies.

One of my other friends doesn’t like that you don’t own business/product outcomes and prefers a product manager role (even though he has worked as a data analyst for a while now and is working on transitioning away).

So, just based on the empirical data that I have, data science might not be an ideal path for everyone.

Hope that helps!

VIEW QUESTION ON QUORA

How do you become a good data analyst?

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This was asked on quora and here’s my reply:

You can become a great data analyst by continuously improving the analytics maturity of the company/start-up that you work for:

[Go to my blog for more context on the picture above]

If you create bunch of reports and help answer what happened— then try to help business users with why it happened. [Example: Instead of just sending website traffic info, add why the traffic spikes (up/downs) are happening]

If you are working on building bunch of models that answer why questions then try to help build predictive models next [Example: You have been working on a model that helped you answer why customers churned. Now built upon that and predict which customers will churn next]

If you do analytics and data science well and are already answering what, why, what’s next questions and you’re killing it! Then figure out how can you help business owners take action. Or make it easier than ever before to take actions on your data/recommendations.

Other answers for questions are directly/indirectly covered if you do this:

  1. You will have to pick the right tool for the job
  2. You will have to continuously keep learning (by taking online courses and/or you-tube)
  3. Don’t just be a data analyst, be a thought partner to business owners and if possible, transition into role that help you own business outcomes.

Hope that helps!

VIEW QUESTION ON QUORA