and Opinionated Advice on
Building a Career in Tech
Rachel House
Practical Tips for
bias
Bias in Neural Nets
Image: http://www.buildhealthnaturally.com/care-and-feeding-of-your-brain/
Large companies
Bachelor's
degree
Non-traditional route to
data science
Anecdata, Observations, and Advice
20% of my career officially employed as a Data Scientist
#IndividualContributor4Life
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
A Short History of My Own Career
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
Student Systems Administrator
Systems Engineer
Proposal Writer
Developer
Data Scientist
job*n = career
What is a career, really?
contribute to society
personal satisfaction
intellectual growth
practical needs
mental and emotional needs
food
shelter
saving for retirement
The purpose of a career is to find our global maximum.
Jobs are our gradient... ascent.
A career is a continuous calibration.
A job is one point in that journey.
Jobs can teach you what you like...
and also what you don't like.
It is safe to assume that you will have many jobs over the course of your career.
It takes two years to get comfortably acclimated in tech job.
2
spring
summer
autumn
winter
https://www.cmurrayenterprises.com
Seasons of Change
Seasons of Change originally from Cynthia Murray
and on the subject of changing jobs...
Changing jobs is completely ok.
Strategize your career.
Make each move for a reason.
Run to an opportunity, not away from a reality.
Don't be afraid of lateral moves or steps backward in pay.
Carefully taken, these choices can superpower your career.
$$$
Student Sysadmin
Proposal Writer
Systems Engineer
Developer
Data Scientist
First entry level job: omg real jobs pay money!
Promotion!
Promotion!
Promotion!
Learn to write and communicate.
Learn to engineer production software.
Learn to build and deploy models.
Field Change:
Senior to entry level.
Field Change:
Senior to entry level.
Field Change:
Lateral move.
the day to day of tech jobs
Money makes the world go round.
You will be hired to improve a company's bottom line.
Replace human effort with automation.
Create new products to increase revenue.
Save Money
Make Money
$
$
You will be a change agent.
You have to build trust with the business and your users.
It is unlikely that you will be working on the cutting edge of technology, constantly creating new breakthroughs.
(Sorry).
You will build things that
make a difference.
You will implement solutions that
help others.
However...
Be prepared to do a lot of software engineering as a "Data Scientist."
Stack Overflow is there for all your syntax needs.
Good software design, not so much.
Building a model
Getting a model into production
Your Time
"ModelOps"
Design with the entire model lifecycle in mind.
Image from SAS
Getting suitable data training data is usually the biggest challenge.
Trust, but verify.
There will be meetings. So. Many. Meetings.
post-covid
pre-covid
Carve out and protect your deep work time.
useful tools and workflows
Reproducibility.
Do future you a solid.
1
2
Your tools and workflows should support two things.
Code
Data
Environment
Reproducibility is the cornerstone of data science.
notebook
source control
code
env
data
Image: jupyter.org
code
env
data
Learn to use git.
These commands will solve 95% of your needs:
git clone REPO_URLgit checkout BRANCH_NAMEgit checkout -b BRANCH_NAMEgit push -u origin BRANCH_NAMEgit pullgit commit -a -m "commit message"git pushgit checkout main
git pull
git checkout BRANCH_NAME
git merge main
git pushPush a new local branch to remote.
Create and checkout a new branch.
Commit all unstaged changes.
Pull down latest main changes, merge changes into your branch, and push.
code
env
data
Regexes are a superpower.
compliments of xkcd.com
code
env
data
package management
environment management
poetry
anaconda
virtualenv
code
env
data
Beware of pickle (and pandas pickles) for long-term storage and serialization.
Use where clauses.
A couple general tips:
Source control your queries.
Data management approaches for data science efforts will be highly dependent on your company datastores and platforms.
Bottom Line
Make it easy for other people to:
,
use
your work.
and
reproduce
integrate
,
Goal for present day you:
Do your future self a solid.
Take the time NOW to write your docstrings.
Figure out a personal filing system approach...
Digital clutter is inevitable.
You are going to create, receive, and store A LOT of files.
...and stick to it.
Make sure everything on your work machine is backed up.
Use company cloud and network storage from Day 1.
advice for career success
Strive for excellence in your work.
"...governed by good ideas and executed with superb craft."
- Edward Tufte
Good communication skills are essential.
Advocate for yourself.
Negotiate your salary, and ask for raises.
Keep records of your successes,
and learn when and how to promote them.
It's not just who you know, ...but it's a lot who you know.
miscellaneous, unsolicited advice for personal success
Always Be Learning.
Take a Personal Finance class.
If you can't, spend some time learning the basics of personal finance before you graduate.
(COMM 2730)
Pay yourself first.
Meet your employer 401k match: it is free money.
Start saving early and consistently.
Income is what you earn, wealth is what you keep.
$
$
$
Personal Finance CliffsNotes:
Invest in yourself (i.e. save for retirement).
Compound interest is what will make you rich.
It is completely ok if your job is not your passion.
At the end of the day, a job really is just... a job.
There are always tradeoffs.
Your career is only one component of your life.
Remember, a career - and life - is a journey.
Stay open to experience along the way.
and, above all...
thank you!
Building a Career in Tech: Practical Tips & Opinionated Advice
By Rachel House
Building a Career in Tech: Practical Tips & Opinionated Advice
You've read the news. Data Scientist is consistently ranked as one of the Hottest/Sexiest/Insert-Alluring-Adjective-Here jobs on the market. Further, tech jobs continue to top yearly "Best .* Job" lists. You think it would be pretty sweet to launch and grow your career in tech, maybe even in data science specifically. However, all these glowing listicles seem to leave out the most critical detail... what is a career in tech *really* like? Join me for a giphy-fueled tour of the observations and insights that I've gleaned during a decade+ career in industry.
