🏃‍♂️ Data Science Transition Week 3

Last updated Jun 19, 2022 Edit Source

• Data science
• Career

This is my first week back from diving into my hair-brained startup idea. Now I’m focused on getting a data science/machine learning job.

This week’s progress has been starting my first machine learning project and learning about the state of the data science/ML job market by reading some great books.

Here are my updates in more depth.

I started my first machine learning project, tentatively called PlaceBot. This is a fun project that aims to allow users to imitate the tweets of a specific user.

I’m still at the beginning stage, where I want to download a user’s tweets and store them locally in a SQLite3 database.

Using a SQL database is a good practice and will help me remember my SQL/DB management skills.

I got stuck for a few days over-engineering the solution, but I am back on track and trying to get this out the door without too much overhead.

Here are the resources I found that helped put the job market into perspective for me:

• Ace the Data Science Interview by Kevin Huo & Nick Singh. I wish I had this book as I wrapped up my undergrad three years ago.
• Build a Career in Data Science by Emily Robinson and Jacqueline Nolis. A very accessible and encouraging overview of the data science career journey.

I’m beginning to understand that to be successful, you need to:

• Understand the business problem
• Communicate the value of the project
• Ship (put the models into production)

Furthermore, I discovered Designing Machine Learning Systems by the fantastic Chip Huyen. This book focuses on shipping models to production and also addresses the common business problems and pitfalls associated with machine learning.

I am excited by the field of machine learning engineering and would like to start there if possible.

Finally, I started to learn about independent consulting. It seems like a promising path after I build up my machine learning skillset.

Consulting join strategy and execution to help companies improve along the dimension you are consulting them on.

At this stage of my career I value career capital and knowledge more than income. Here’s how I rank my priorities in my next role from most to least important:

1. Creating value for others
2. Working on something that makes the world better, not worse
3. Learning my desired skill-set. Right now this is shipping machine learning models and/or helping make decisions that drive business impact.
4. Independence. I want to do work as an independent consultant/freelancer and move towards being an entrepreneur.
5. Making a lot of money

I hope understanding my career journey goals up front will increase my chances of success and reduce my search time. Thanks for tuning in and until next week!

I'm a freelance software developer located in Denver, Colorado. If you're interested in working together or would just like to say hi you can reach me at me@ this domain.