Chee Yee Lim

Data Science Team & Tech Lead

Tag: Career Development

  • Owning your career as a data scientist

    Owning your career as a data scientist

    It is the time of the year again when people start to reflect on the past year and plan for the year ahead.

    Besides planning out the next holiday or the typical I-will-hit-the-gym-more resolution, it may be worth taking some time to reflect on your career.

    It is often said that we should own our own career, but most people do not offer relevant or actionable advice for data scientists. Especially since data science is a relatively new field.

    I have set out to seek this information in an old-school way – i.e. by reading books.

    After reading a few books (including one that is specifically written for data scientists), I was mostly disappointed by them, until I chanced upon the Software Engineer’s Guidebook by Gergely Orosz.

    You can tell from the name of the book that it is written for software engineers, but I find most (if not all) advice in there apply for data scientists as well.

    The tone of the book is direct and easily digestible, without obfuscation by languages you typically encounter in a corporate environment.

    Amongst many other topics, it talks about how to navigate performance reviews & promotions, the importance of soft skills & longer tenure as you rise in seniority, and how to thrive in different companies.

    The most important takeaway for me is (in my own words) – A successful career path is not a linear journey, and it is not about drawing the highest paycheck or having the fanciest job title. Do not overlook the seemingly small things along the way that will help you grow towards where you want to be over the long term.

    The book did not tell me the destination of my career path, but it did give me tools to help me reach there sooner.

  • Soft skill – +1 mindset

    Soft skill – +1 mindset

    Recently I reflected on my professional career on things that I have done differently earlier on in my career versus now.

    One thing that stood out is, that I practice the +1 mindset now.

    The +1 mindset considers not just my views, but also the others that I interact with.

    Early on in my career, I tend to question many decisions made by senior management, because I thought some of those decisions do not make sense.

    Disgruntled, I felt. Why can they miss something so obvious, I thought.

    ”Why you wouldn’t use my ML model when it is shown to perform better than your Excel model?”

    ”Why can’t we do things the proper way, that may cost a lot but is more scalable over the long term?”

    ”Why do I have to do this support task? We should hire someone else to do it.”

    As I progressed in my career and see the same issues popping up everywhere I go, I realized it may be due to my way of thinking and perhaps a lack of understanding of certain issues. I started to put myself in the shoes of my stakeholders, i.e. bosses, clients and cross-functional teams.

    Then things start to get clearer.

    ”My ML model is performing well on these technical metrics, but they do not translate into actual metrics cared about by the business.”

    ”Business values need to be proven first to justify high costs, especially when we do not know if the tool will really be useful.”

    ”End-to-end ownership of a tool including post-deployment support gives a better understanding of the tool I developed. As the tool scales, maybe I can justify getting a support person to handle it.”