Top 5 Things I Wish Someone Had Shared With Me Before I Started My Career In Analytics & Data Science
My first blog post
It’s 2023, and I’m finally creating my first blog. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. But here we are.
What’s driving me to do this? Frankly, there is so much I’ve experienced and learned along the way that I deeply wish I had known when I was younger. I’m still learning. But whatever I have learned so far, I want to pass it along to you in the hopes it helps you or someone you know that may be navigating some difficult waters.
I have often felt alone in my career – navigating rocky terrain blindly by myself. So if you’re here, you’re already doing better than I did!
Top 5 Things I Wish Someone Had Shared With Me Before I Started My Career In Analytics & Data Science
1. Effort doesn’t always translate into success – and that’s okay
I’ve had many projects over the years where I pushed myself so hard to achieve the impossible, and had nothing to show for it. I once led a team of data scientists that spent an entire year developing a predictive model of fraud that was strong and had great results. We even mocked up a predictive dashboard and developed a process around using it. We scoped out a pilot study.
But our stakeholders decided not to use it. Not due to lack of results, they just changed their minds – largely due to issues occurring in other aspects of their job. It was devastating for the entire team.
But silver lining – that one year of effort did ultimately produce so many learnings that we were able to apply to other complex projects. And those efforts went so much smoother than they would have otherwise because we had developed so many processes and approaches in the earlier project.
So if you’ve recently completed a project that tanked or you’re in the middle of one that seems headed in that direction, just remember that you’ll likely be able to move faster on the next one. It wasn’t a giant waste of time even though it may feel that way in the aftermath.
2. Your sharpest critics can often be your best teachers
Early in my career, this manager in another department was extremely threatened and competitive – no idea why as I didn’t care about them at all. But this manager would always try to find problems with my work. In the beginning it would make me so angry because I could tell they just had an agenda.
But with time, I just used all their criticisms to improve my work. And I started anticipating what they would say and ended up making amazing analytics solutions that blew folks away, and I continued to develop those skills well into my career at more and more senior levels.
So if you’re dealing with someone that is being overly harsh and picking apart your work – just use that as information and fuel to make your next work product that much stronger. You’ll reap those benefits while they get frustrated!
3. A toxic work environment is NEVER worth it
I know it’s a luxury to say leave a bad job and find something else. But if you find yourself stuck in toxic work environment, please try to make plans to leave. Any time you invest in carving out options for yourself is well worth it.
It won’t improve. It’s not in your head. It won’t get better. These are all the things you tell yourself to try and force yourself to stay. But if you can, please make plans & leave! It’ll take a toll on you to hang around there.
I plan to write a whole series on this. Please message me if you’re interested in more topics on this!
4. Ask for what you want and deserve – proudly!
All cultures are different, and in my culture, it’s unseemly to do self-promotion and aggressively ask for what is your due. Minority women in particular are pressured to be humble and to avoid making waves.
But that doesn’t work at work! If you feel you deserve a promotion or a raise, speak up! Everyone else is!! And when you do speak up, expect push back. But don’t take it personally and don’t let that deter you. Just prepare for how you’ll respond to that.
There are tons of resources and even scripts for how to do that, and I’d be happy to write more on that or point you towards resources.
5. Technical skills actually matter very little for your career success
This is sad (maybe), but true. The field is very competitive, and everyone has amazing technical skills with the exception of a few. So if you want to stand out and excel, you’ll have to develop the “softer” skills of communication, translating technical concepts to non-technical audiences – but without being condescending or patronizing. That’s key. No one can stand a snarky know-it-all that can’t explain themselves clearly and succinctly.
You’ll also need to develop excellent use case scoping skills and analytics project management skills. If you can’t scope out what you’ll do and execute that work against a timeline – you’ll most likely become well known as the person that takes on projects that tank. And fun exciting work won’t find its way to you. Where’s the fun in that?? So invest in these key skills, and you’ll find broader success.
That’s it for now! Good luck this week!
-Dr. Christy
