I am a data-camp subscriber + mentor w/ springboard + completed free-content on data-quest so familiar w/ all three products in some way.

You need two things to have a successful career:

1. Strong Foundation
2. Continuous learning

Let’s talk about Continuous Learning first:

In a field that’s as dynamic as data science, you should always be learning! It could be through your projects at your work, side-projects or online resources.

I would categorize both data-camp and data-quest under this and are great platforms for continuous learning. I am a subscriber on DataCamp and it’s a great platform to just dive in, do some hands-on exercises and learn something new. I love it! I have heard equally positive things about DataQuest so if you are already working in the Industry as a Data Scientist and just want to get deeper technically, then go for these platforms!

Now Let’s talk about Strong Foundation:

You need a strong foundation to get hired as Data Scientist. You would do that by typically having a relevant college degree. But:

1. A lot of people don’t have relevant college degrees OR
2. They graduated a few years back and are looking to do a career transition now OR
3. They are not willing to go back to do multi-year college programs focused on data science

If that’s the case then there’s a new approach in the market where you attend these “boot camps” — you still need some foundation skills like for example: math/programming/statistics to be eligible for Data science boot camps and if you have those basic skills then you can go through these boot camps. There’s a bunch of them out there. Just search for “data science boot camps”. Springboard is one of them and I have heard nothing but positive things about them — just like I have about DataCamp & DataQuest. I have personally mentored 6 students so far and all them were looking for a career transition and had nothing but positive things to say! That’s just my empirical data though, you should do a trial w/ them and/or check out their job guarantee through their career track if that is important to you. But either ways, it’s a “Bootcamp” offering so it has regular mentor calls/check-in’s, projects, career-coaches, non-technical material like resume tips to give you a structured approach to everything that you might need to get hired as a data scientist — You can expect intense guided learning over a short period of time. The Bootcamp approach is different than self-learning and self-paced approach by DataCamp & DataQuest.

PS: I mentor for Springboard and I have a $750 OFF discount code to share if you decide to enroll. Please contact me through to get the code: Let’s Connect! – Insight Extractor – Blog (If you prefer to not use the referral link, just search for “springboard” and sign up there)

The World is not binary!

I am not saying that you can’t break into Data Science with just DataCamp and DataQuest — you would need to complement it w/ other resources and put more effort to cover everything that you may need. With enough motivation, it could be done for sure! Depending on how fast you want to break into data science + how much time you can invest in figuring out the right resources are two of the biggest factor to determine if you need to go through a Bootcamp.

Conclusion:

If you are already working as a data scientist, DataCamp and DataQuest are great for continuous learning! If you are new to this and don’t have a relevant education background then boot camps like Springboard are a great choice.

Hope that helps!

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