happyhour-jun4.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:09] Oh, yeah, what's up, everybody? Welcome, welcome to the artist of Data Science, Happy Hour. It is Friday, June 4th, two twenty twenty one. Super excited to have all of you guys here. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for hanging out. It is June. That means it's Pride Month. Shout out to all my LGBTQ friends, audience members, podcast listeners. This one's for you guys. I hope you guys are having a great day. Hopefully I'll get a chance to check out the episode I released today with my good friend Argin Such there he is, the co host of the Rising Laterally podcast, which is a pretty damn cool podcast. So hopefully I get an opportunity to tune into that episode and I'm super excited to have all of you guys here. The waiting room is packed, people are funding and this is awesome to see so many wonderful people here shout out to all the good friends, Eric Russell, James, Dave frickin Langurs in the house. They a man. Good to see you. Hopefully you guys get a chance to check out the episode that Dave had on the Super Data Science podcast with John Krohn. I'll be sure to link to that episode right there in the show notes you guys have easy access to it, but definitely check out that interview. I definitely enjoyed listening to it. I was having a laugh to cry. Milo, that inspired is a good episode, Matt. I really enjoyed that. But I I'm super excited to have all you guys here. So last week I opened up with a question about belief.

Speaker1: [00:01:32] What are some beliefs that we had, some beliefs that, you know, if you reflect on now that they were kind of incorrect as it pertains to your career and Data science, as I look around here, there's a lot of well accomplished folks in the Data space, a lot of people, you know, who have been in the game for a while. And, you know, I'm wondering for for for you guys out there who've already got your Data science dream job who who's already, you know, out there working like what was what were some of the the points of confusion you had when you were trying to break into Data science? I know that personally, for me, being a statistician, having just, you know, being an actuary, being a statistician, just having a lot of statistical knowledge, my biggest point of confusion was how is this different than data science? And it turns out there is kind of a gap between traditional academic statistics and data science. There's the whole technology piece and all that stuff. So that was the biggest point of confusion because there are so many things out there that do a particular thing and there's just so many products out there that have the same functionality, but they just have different names. So that was confusing to me, was just kind of getting getting my head around all the different technology and all that stuff. But let's go to let's go to my good friend Dave Languor here. Dave, when you were cracking the Data science, what was something that just had you confused?

Speaker2: [00:02:54] What exactly hiring managers were really looking for was something that I found really confusing. So when I first when I first decided that I was going to get the title data scientist, I was working at Microsoft. And at that point in time, this was probably five, six years ago now, maybe seven. They were really basically looking for people with PhDs. And that was at my level in the company in particular, they were like, well, Dave, you don't have a PhD and have twenty years of experience. How can you do this job? And when I would ask about what's really the job, they would tell me and I'm like, well, I can do that. Look at these things that I've done. So there was that level of confusion. Now, of course, as we all know, have seen and probably seen on social media, it seems to have gotten worse over time. You know, not better. You know, the whole proverbial you need to have years of experience in this particular framework. And the framework has only been around for X minus five years, that sort of thing. So that was one of the things that I found the most most confusing was exactly like nailing down really what do you really need to know to do the job? And because what ends up happening and we've seen this a lot, I think with a lot of folks posting on social media, is that once they actually get into the job, there's these list of requirements and they're so huge, they're so big and, you know, all these things.

Speaker2: [00:04:04] And then you study like mad and you get all these things and then you land on the job and you're making power by dashboards all day. So so there's really I still think there's still this confusion. There's still this mismatch between like what the ideal is, what the dream is of doing this work, and then what the reality is. And my personal experience has been, is that most of the work can actually be done with a relatively few number of tools and techniques, generally speaking, outside of specialty areas. Right. If you're building self-driving cars, that's one thing. But if you're just doing general data science, you'd be surprised at how remarkably similar it probably looks across companies and roles day in and day out.

Speaker1: [00:04:41] Yeah, and I mean, there's got to be just some checklist of skills and things you should know that we should agree upon to say, look, if you know these things right here, this set of things, you're good. We can teach you anything else. You can just learn it on the job. Don't waste your time chasing after, you know, ten different cloud certificates or things like that, like just just focus on these things. And then from here, this is going to be the absolute strong. Foundation, and you can build on top of that, you just keep building and building and building. I want to hear from her, from Eric, because I know, Eric, you just landed landed a job and just landed an awesome role. And I mean, and he just graduated school as well. So. So talk to us about that.

Speaker3: [00:05:22] Yeah. So, yeah. So I was actually just like writing up a LinkedIn post in the other window here. Just finished my first week. Who managed not to delete anything in production, which is good. And so yeah, I would say the biggest thing for me that I was confused about, not necessarily that I just didn't know about, but that I was confused about is what the heck is networking and how do I do that without feeling slimy and terrible and just. Yeah, you know, because my previous experience of networking in any capacity or whatever in college or whatever was just awful and disingenuous or boring or uncomfortable or, you know, nobody liked it. No one wanted to be there. And so so in that way, it's like it was actually really nice kind of getting to know a few people on my on my new team because I knew, like, OK, I'm going to be I'm going to be working at Lending Tree here starting soon. So I looked up a few people who were probably going to be on my team or maybe doing something similar at the company and reached out to them if they looked like they were active on LinkedIn, result of RASM ahead of time. And so a couple of people already knew who I was and I already kind of had a little bit of an intro to them. So that was really nice. And even though that was after I had already found out the company that I'd be working with. And so it's like I didn't I didn't have to reach out and say something. Well, maybe I said something dumb, but I didn't have to say something dumb. Right. I was just trying to reach out to them and be their friend and get to know them professionally. And I just find that. So it's nice. It just feels like talking to real people. And I like when people approach me that way, too.

Speaker1: [00:06:57] You know, if anybody follows content on LinkedIn, would you talk about networking? You don't mean like networks like like how are you doing network analysis type of thing.

Speaker3: [00:07:06] You not not graph networks. Now this is like people networks which I guess could be engraft, I suppose, right.

Speaker1: [00:07:11] Yeah. Yeah. Networking. That's a that's, that's a good point man. I mean it's, it's definitely it's more of an art for sure than science. I mean, there's there's definitely a good way to do it in a bad way to do it. And I think VIMS got a great video on that on his channel about how to network. And yeah, I mean if anybody has any specific questions then that we can get into that. But I want to go to a question here from I got a question in the email from Spencer Holder. I don't know if Spencer's in the chat right now. Yes, you are. Spencer Horlicks. Sorry, not Spencer. Holly Spencer. I really like your question, man. This is this is going to kick off a really, really good discussion here. So why don't you go for a man your muted.

Speaker4: [00:07:50] You want me to kind of explain what I said in the email?

Speaker1: [00:07:53] Yeah, absolutely. Please.

Speaker4: [00:07:54] Yeah. Yeah. So so anyway, I'm one of those Data science boot camp people anyway. And I recently finished a Data science boot camp with the different and I'm kind of kind of going in a little slump on the job hunt in a way. I don't really think it's anything that unusual compared to most people, just a little bit of imposter syndrome kind of thing like that. The difference is that I didn't I don't have undergrad. I just basically finished high school, did a year of working and then did this boot camp. So I'm kind of started having some doubts about getting a job, you know, during this time. And I asked my career coach about it, and he's kind of like, oh, you can you know, they're just the job listings that say they need a degree. They're just kind of saying that you can still get a job and all of that stuff in Data science. But then I've talked to other people. I kind of say otherwise. And I know that my career coach, he works for the boot camp, so he may have some bias. So I'm just kind of curious what you guys would have to say about that. Know what I said in an email? To my understanding, it seems like based on what I've heard from other from some people, my best bet would be to work at some really small startup, has one or two people and do some work for very low or free. And that's what I could do. But I'm just wondering whether you all think,

Speaker1: [00:09:20] Yeah, yeah, man, thank you very much. I really like that question. So that's a good question. Right. Like here you are. You haven't completed Kevin completed on a formal four year degree for your education and trying to break into Data science. Right. And I'll give you a couple of a couple of things here. First thing, there's a one of my friends. His name is John Wall. He has no degree podcast. So definitely check out that podcast. He talks to a lot of industry leaders in that podcast talking about how, you know, having a degree doesn't necessarily imply anything. Right. And I want to give you kind of a bit of an anecdote from when I was in grad school. So my grad school advisor was Cristoff of Chef. He can't say his name is Paul, this guy, but definitely like a legend in the actuarial sciences space. And I just remember this thing sticking out in my head so much, he's like, I don't understand why the Society of Actuaries requires you to not only complete a battery of exams, but also get degrees. He's like, anybody can be an actuary if you just pass the exams. Right. That's the only proof you need that you can handle. The work is passing actuarial exams. And then he could do it. Right. And that really stuck with me. Here's somebody who is a PhD, well respected person in the field is saying that I don't understand why people are going to grad school and getting degrees in actuarial sciences or even getting degrees at all when they could just graduate from high school with the calculus they know and finish the exams and get into actuarial sciences.

Speaker1: [00:10:46] Personally, I would say this like maybe 20 years ago, this advice would not have been valid. But look at the world now and look at how much open education there is, how much you can go anywhere and learn something. Right. There's these like Udacity nanobot degrees, which I was looking at the curriculum for a few of them. And they're really, really comprehensive curriculums. Personally, I feel like to make an Data science. Do you need to go through a formal education? Know like what's the what is the difference between you sitting in a class watching an old person at the head of the class or writing on a board, teaching you something versus you sitting in front of your computer watching somebody who's, you know, probably more attuned to the field teaching you the same stuff? Right. Why do you have to go through a whole battery of courses like electives, the first two years of college, which aren't even related to the work that you're doing? So personally, I would like to see this whole concept of and look, I'm seeing this as an unfortunate a holder of a graduate degree in math and statistics as well.

Speaker1: [00:11:49] I feel like a wasted my time in grad school. I could learn this shit on my own. Now I could have because there's so much resources out there. I would like to see the world move to a place where we don't need to go to university anymore for certain types of jobs. Right. Like a fucking doctor. Yeah. Go fucking go to the doctor. Yeah, go to a formal education, because I don't want somebody I don't want anybody operating on me to an online course or, you know, trying to pull out my teeth with an online course. But Data scientist. Yeah, for sure. You know, hopefully not kill anyone biostatistician. Maybe you should go to school. So I would just say that I must stop talking because I want I want to see other people have to say that's just my viewpoint. Let's go to let's go to two to Greg Coquille first. And after Greg, I see Antonio is in the building, San Antonio, if you can get ready to reply after Greg. And then I got a bunch of questions into QIC. All of you guys, we're going to get you guys lined up and get you in due time. So go for it, Greg.

Speaker4: [00:12:45] Yeah, it's it was awesome hearing your your your story, Spencer. And it's unfortunate because we have this conventional way of educating. Right. So power is out there. They're looking for ways to hire with minimal risk. And to minimize this risk, you have to show paperwork that you have the ability to understand their business model and address their needs. And the only way right now because of conventions is that paper comes from a university. But nowadays there are some unconventional ways of doing so. For example, you go to that school right now, you get a contract with them where you go through their program of coding and they help you get hired because you've demonstrated capability to perform. And it said that you pay them once you get hired, a certain percentage at a certain time. And the other the good news for you is that big companies are now embracing the idea of you don't need a degree to get hired. So Google is exploring that. I can't remember whether they said, oh, yeah, we're eliminating Batia degrees for certain positions. But I'd advise you to start following these trends. When companies like Google start putting these things out there, other people will follow suit. And also, you already answered that question for yourself, too, what you mentioned. Maybe you should join a small company to start building companies.

Speaker4: [00:14:11] If you're looking for a job at another company. They love to see if you don't have a degree. What have you built before? That's why people always ask for projects. What have you worked on? You're trying to minimize that risk of hiring somebody who doesn't know how to address their problems. So by showcasing that, you understand business cases, you understand situations where you've built a product, a system to address certain pain points. You're closing that gap forever. In the work you have to do for yourself is look for companies are open to embracing your skills and getting you on board in those including startups, as you mentioned, and also companies like Google who are now opening their doors to to to unconventional folks who don't believe that a formal education like a four year degree is the only way to go. So, again, keep your ears out, keep your eyes open, keep networking it. Also keep building because building and building. On things that solve problems, and this is what will be your key to making sure that powers can trust you and get you on board to continue to solve problems for them and continue with that strategy of closing that gap. Once you close that gap, you will find more companies would be willing to to get you on board.

Speaker1: [00:15:25] Thank you very much, Antonio. Let's hear from you then after Antonio. Let's go to my friend James here, James Luban after James Lee. Let's hear from Dave Langer. And if anybody else wants to speak on this topic, please, I would love to get, you know, a diverse range of responses here and 20 different driving in its own safe. OK, I can skip you

Speaker5: [00:15:43] Know, it's good I pulled over, but I'm almost here. I'm actually going to a soccer game, but it's always great to be here. And I totally agree with you about the four year degree requirement really sucks. Unfortunately, some companies still want it. Like I know in my company of Verizon, if you don't get past H.R., you never even get to speak to a manager, because I've had some great friends who have been totally qualified. I recommended them and they're like, I believe you or the H.R. person just have some policies, right? So if you run into that, just move on to another company. There's dozens of companies there. I haven't really ran into them, no degree, because I do have a formal education. Not that it's useful, but I do have the piece of paper. But what I ran into is I didn't have the years of experience most companies were requiring. And when I was starting out, I was like, oh, you're just out of college, we can't hire you for it is like senior analyst role or whatever it was. And what worked for me and this is just for my experience, one is are making like your projects. I know Eric said, do you have a GitHub profile? I put Data find a project with him in my GitHub. And what I did is not just throw some code in there.

Speaker5: [00:16:53] I will put it like this is the business case, right? It's not an actual company. So I did for example, I scraped Data from Airbnb and I said, I am working on a client for Airbnb who has a rental and I want to maximize their profit. So I create what a man who they have in the room build the whole Data science project around it. And I said, if this client implements my suggestions, they're going to like doubled their revenue. So I built up a whole business case. It was like, what are the most important variable? Did that whole thing? Was that at all cost on LinkedIn? Explain what it is posted on on GitHub. And people started seeing it. So that and my resumé, I would I added that as I added as an academic experience and I say increased Airbnb conversions by this much amount because of this. And then when I went to an interview, I was able to speak to it as if I did have that work experience. I never said that I work for them. But at the same time, you kind of play it out. You know, you have to be confident. You have to really believe and sell yourself, because ultimately that's what it is. So that's what I will highly recommend, posting that content and really treating it like you're getting paid to do that is very important.

Speaker5: [00:18:01] And the second thing which I did commit the years requirement was when I was in college, I was doing like peer advising. So I was helping students with their schedule. And I was in an analytics program when I went to an interview. Right. Anything I have done remotely close to Data. I was putting it on there. Right. I was putting that I was advising students on the Data science track because I helped some kids with them schedule, you know, is it exaggeration? Yeah, but you have to do what you got to do. You know, even the valet parking. And I was managing a couple of people there and you put like let a team of four, you know, been 300, 300 people event and then you show leadership. So that way maybe you're going to start, because I know some companies have either bachelor's or more years of experience or you can get your ears up there. You know, if you work, whatever you work where you have some opportunity, put that on there. I think no job is beneath you and everybody start somewhere. And if you can talk about it and be confident about it, it's going I can't it's not going to guarantee you a job, but it's going to increase your chances. So hopefully I help.

Speaker1: [00:19:05] Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And hopefully I'm a good soccer game there, man. So let's go to let's go to James. And then after James got a deal and then after dinner, let's hear from Vivian. Vivian has a really great point here that I'd like to unlock from the chat. So go for it.

Speaker4: [00:19:21] So I Spencer, I also did bootcamp a couple of months ago, so I kind of know where you're sitting at, where you stand there like, oh, I finished this boot camp, but am I actually useful? Am I actually helpful? And I actually stay. I just met up with a couple of the other graduates from that boot camp. And, you know, a lot of them had gotten positions already. One of them was solely on, oh, I had this as my final product from boot camp. I talked to someone in my network on LinkedIn. You just looked at the project, said, this is something I can use and hired me on the spot. So there's a lot of opportunities out there for just if you have a project or if you've done the work you can get, get those asks and invites. And like a couple of other people who also have stuff, it was just there is an online kind of test that they did. Is there your internship, another starting an internship, and that's going to lead into another role later on? So really just I want to emphasize what Greg said, push off on to get help and make a project. And a lot of times people are just looking at that project. And I guess the kind of other thing is sometimes it might just be the bootcamps enough to get you in the door. You don't get in as the data scientist, but they're like, oh, you've shown dedication, you've shown work. Maybe you can come in as a kubernetes. Maybe you can come, as, you know, some other ancillary role. And we'll let you sit here for a year or two while you work your Data science skills and then move into the actual data science role you want. And that's another thing that's kind of a possibility for these boot camp graduates like us.

Speaker1: [00:20:40] Thank you very much, James. Let's go to Dave. Yeah.

Speaker2: [00:20:42] So I really like what Greg said, which was this idea of think about it from the hiring managers perspective as a risk minimization exercise. So I will also give an anecdote. My very first job in technology was working Help Desk because I couldn't land a software engineering role. So I worked on the Help Desk. As James was alluding to, I took a role that wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was in the technology space. And then eventually I moved myself into doing software engineering over time. So I'm I am familiar with this catch. Twenty two of you can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience without a job and job. Experience is basically a risk minimization strategy for the hiring manager at base. So if you think of it that way, you've got a lot more options these days than I did. I won't even tell you what year that was that I got my first tech job. It was a long time ago, but you got a lot more options now. So, for example, you can go to the freelancing sites and you could start doing analytics, freelancing, work. And even if you're only getting paid a little bit of money for it, it's OK.

Speaker2: [00:21:42] You're still getting paid to do analytics work. So that counts. That's a risk minimization strategy, because you can say to a hiring manager, look, I've had people pay me to do this kind of thing here. And here's a portfolio. I mean, that's basically what a project portfolio is as well. It's a risk minimization strategy. So you can use the power of and to help yourself out, you can create an awesome Data portfolio project up on GitHub. And you can also try and get some freelancing work. And you can also target small companies that might be a little bit more risk tolerant than a large company. And you can also look into things like contracting as well. Don't necessarily look to be a full time employee, but maybe try and get a contracting job instead, because contracting is also lower risk because they could just get rid of you at any time. So it's a lot less risky for them to hire on a contractor than a full time employee. So those are a bunch of different strategies that you can employ to get yourself some experience and also lower your perceived risk to a hiring manager eventually for a full time position.

Speaker1: [00:22:37] Évian, thank you very much. Data by the way, I appreciate that Dave was writing code on the Commodore. Was that Commodore 64?

Speaker2: [00:22:46] That's totally true. I think so, yeah. So the first code so I took I took a basic programing class with my dad back in the eighties and we had a Commodore 64 and I wrote basic code. So yes, that

Speaker1: [00:22:58] Was he was doing spreadsheets on Lotus one, two, three. That's why he knows Excel so well. Oh, come on, let him go for it.

Speaker6: [00:23:08] Well, I guess I just wanted to add a piece about how Yuval Noah Harari, the guy that wrote sapiens, you know, he wrote a book called One Lessons for the Twenty First Century as well. And in it, he talks a little bit about education and like the future of the job market and things like that and just how like, you know, we're in a we're in a great change of the workforce and stuff like that, like where jobs are going, where the money is, that sort of stuff, and that it will only become more common for people to need to pivot in their careers really quickly and stuff. And so he was actually predicting that in the future that like traditional education will not be like it is now, that it will be much more common for people to like have very small bursts of intense education that is very practical and skill-based and then like go and do that thing for a while. Until then, like, you hit another dead end or something, and then kind of like just keep pivoting around. And that's kind of like I don't know. I've thought about that idea for a while that it does definitely feel like I don't know, because I did a bootcamp and I specifically chose the boot camp because I was like, well, I've done traditional education and I know so I know I learned from I don't want to say my mistakes, but, you know, you kind of like like we've been talking about this whole time that everyone's been saying that you don't really need, like a traditional education necessarily for a lot of things anyway. So that's I was really glad with my decision to do a boot camp that it was like fast and intense. And I learned everything I needed to learn kind of thing. So, yeah, that's just a thought I've been that I've been thinking about.

Speaker1: [00:24:55] I think we've been absolutely loving. By the way, man, thank you so much for taking over for me a couple weeks ago. It's an epic job. I absolutely love that. So thank you for for crushing it as a hostess for me.

Speaker6: [00:25:07] Oh, yeah. Welcome. Thanks for those who showed up to. It was great

Speaker1: [00:25:10] And yeah, that I like that point that you brought up. And he has an interview with James Altucher and James out to Nevada, where we got the two heroes of mine. They they both had the same mindset that traditional education system is now working for the modern world anymore. But check out the interview with No. Harare, even though Harare and James Altucher. And then if you wait just a month or so, then you can check out the interview that James Elesha did on my show.

Speaker4: [00:25:39] He would think I wanted to add something. Yeah, yeah. Please, Spencer, just to summarize some of our strategy in exploring everything to our advantage nowadays, a lot of companies are getting open. Now, your strategy is to minimize that risk, making the hirer feel like they're not risking it all to hire you are and and minimizing that risk. So you want to close the gap. To do that, you have to focus. You're going to feel like you can solve the world's problems. But that's not the best way because you will dilute how many projects you can solve across industry. Say you want a health care, stop building your portfolio around health care because now you're going to start closing the gap around there. If you want to continue to build projects around there, use those techniques. David, Antônio, everybody told you about to build your products, to close the gap inside of that focus will get you there. Now, once you focus about reducing that risk, you go around leveraging other things. LinkedIn is one of them. Use emotion. Think about those viral notes you could put out. Imagine a video you put up with a project where you say, oh, I don't have a degree, but this is what I can also use your army boom. You show it, it goes viral. These are the things that today people go crazy about. Those those viral things can get you out there, get somebody noticed to notice you. And again, you know, think about the strategy. Think about everything you can do around a strategy. Think about the power of networking in the power of focusing, and then you'll get there. I'm excited for you, man. So reach out to me any time. I'm willing to help you out, talk to you any you want.

Speaker1: [00:27:08] At some point, that was that very, very well put. And somebody mentioned freelancing and freelancing is something I want to do. Like I would check out. There's this really cool guy. Think Storify and X T are on YouTube and he's all about freelancing. And he he teaches you. He's got this book and a course for free entirely on YouTube called Escape the Rat Race with Python. Definitely worth checking out. So next question I got on the docket here is from Martin. But if anybody else wants to to to speak on this topic before we move on now, give me the chance to open it up to anybody just to feel free to unmuted topic that we're talking about is Spencer here is. Yeah. So Mark Spencer's he's fresh out of high school, doesn't have a formal four year degree, but he's wondering, can I make it in Data science by doing bootcamps? Like, do I actually need to sit through two years of electives, just do two years of of classes? Can I just skip the B.S., go straight to stuff. I want bootcamps.

Speaker4: [00:28:10] That's such a great question. I asked the question myself because I'm one and having like the academia for like research design is really helpful. On the other hand, you so much just from on LinkedIn. I mean like De

Speaker1: [00:28:26] Wanger has

Speaker4: [00:28:27] This whole series of Excel to analytics. Right. You know, all these other individuals have all these free resources Data Danny Preschool's like you can learn and you can just build a portfolio and show someone like I can provide you value in this way. I think like people are more open to it now. But the challenge is that like the degree and the and the kind of like credentials are easy ways to show your stamp of approval. Like, yes, I've been trained for that. But, you know, if you put in the extra effort to essentially stay like this, how I think about your company, this kind of solution are very creative for this. How you solve your problem like that takes the extra level to showing them that you can do it. And so I think it's it's definitely a different path, that's for sure. And a less charted path. But like, if you're a committee and you're very focused on not becoming a data scientist, but providing value to a company is solving the problems with Data, I think that will really make the difference for that. And I think a case example is my I talk about that for a while. My good friend, he was looking for a new job. He essentially to start reaching out to startups that he was interested in and their use case problem. The saying like, this is my experience and it's like I'm like twenty three. I'm going to like select senior roles. I was just like, here's my experience in health care. If you did X, Y, Z, your company, I think you would solve this. A company ended up making a whole new position right under the CEO, perhaps just to accelerate it right. Completely outside of the scope. But he showed value through his domain knowledge that he learned on the own on the Internet and applying it to someone's problem and solving the problem.

Speaker1: [00:30:06] Absolutely. And Spencer, I'm sure you picked up on a common theme here among a lot of these responses, and so there's a lot there that you can take away. And, you know, if you want to know how that I find startups to get a crunch base subscription, you can search crunch, crunch sorry, the secret space crunch base look for companies that were just recently funded. Go to the LinkedIn, see if they've got under 20, 30 people and target those those companies, not those like three or four hundred large people, companies.

Speaker4: [00:30:38] I would quickly caveat avoid companies that are only three or four people because they need someone who's really experienced the help that you need someone right past that, like we need to get it going by, like, all right, we just need traction now. So most people like the growth stage and trying to find product market fit keywords just to look at.

Speaker1: [00:30:55] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you can tell how fast the company is growing. I think most LinkedIn company pages, when you land on the company page, will have a headcount growth over time. So you can look at that chart and see which ones have been kind of really trending up in the last few months or so. Spencer. Any other questions or follow ups or we get to go to the next

Speaker3: [00:31:16] Question or one little thing that hasn't been said yet?

Speaker1: [00:31:18] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker3: [00:31:19] So one thing I'll say to you that I would have said to myself a little while ago is like if you're out of high school and you went to a boot camp and you can't all of a sudden land a job that other people go to school for like several years for and stuff like that, like men don't kick yourself, you know, like if you're if you find yourself taking what feels like the slow road because it takes you three years to get there, every step of the way is a valuable step on the way. And because I, I started feeling like I felt this way, like different parts of my career so far at different times. And I get really impatient and I feel like I'm really slow. I feel like everyone else is killing it. I feel like I must be stupid, like whatever. Right. All those all those things that probably aren't really true and also don't really move forward like it's OK. Like the journey is the journey and it's it's, you know, some people, you just you get there when you get there. And like Mark was saying, it really made me think about it was if you just focus on creating value for whoever you work with, whenever you're working there, you're going to have a great time doing whatever it is that you're doing on the way to the next thing that you're going to do.

Speaker1: [00:32:26] Absolutely, man. Very, very well put. Thank you so much for that. And yeah, I mean, it only feels slow because you're in the moment doing it right now. In hindsight, it will not feel as slow two, three years. I mean I just turned thirty eight when I look back ten years ago it time just went by quick. Right. So and you're still young that you can experiment a little bit. Right. So if you derail for a year or two, it's not the end of the world and you're still like probably 19. You still like twenty, twenty one, twenty two and still, still get back on track. Kevin, what's going on in.

Speaker4: [00:33:04] So yeah, I was just going to bring up Mike Wimar. I don't know if you guys are familiar with them, but only lives an hour up the road for me. He just graduated from high school. Junior college last week. Yeah. Yeah. And he's already done six contracts for the government and he started when he was ten. So, yeah, he didn't have a high school education, he didn't have a college education, but he was able to provide value, provide what they wanted and what they needed. It's been OK for a twelve year old.

Speaker1: [00:33:30] It's got my son, one year old now. Eleven years from now. Boy, he ain't got no government contracts. We have a problem. So I got a question from Martin next to this. Let's go to Martin. But by the way, you guys, if you're listening to this eleven years later. No, I'm just kidding, man. It's OK. Just be twelve it.

Speaker3: [00:33:48] Martin. Yeah. Actually, my question is very similar to Spencer. I mean, the lead difference might be that he's got some great high school and well, I have a little bit more years of walking around on this area. I mean, my question basically, how can I make the hiring manager see me since my letting to my resume or my applications? I mean, I have it a little bit of experience in Data Six Sigma certified engineer, but not as a Data engineer or data scientist right now. I mean, I thought I didn't need to teach because I live because of Six Sigma and I can work and made out because of that. But when I had started this Google, that analytics certification, Data Coursera, I just got the information like, OK, there's a lot more techniques that we can learn. I mean, I have not found a job since October. I had been applying to a lot of jobs, but I'm really wanting to do some service that analytics or data science. Right. I know this is difficult. I know how to have their projects that the improvement of project, how to get this inside this location. But how can they really move to a. All day at our roll, that's my my basic question.

Speaker1: [00:35:12] Yeah, the first step is to apply for them. So have you been applying for jobs? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker3: [00:35:17] I mean,

Speaker1: [00:35:18] So how's that? How's that response been? Have you been getting any any callbacks or anything like that. Like what's what's going on.

Speaker3: [00:35:25] I don't know if I'm trying to apply to the jobs outside. I'm from Mexico, I'm applying to jobs and from outside from Mexico, and I'm having that barrier. Do you have any employment business worked working outside Mexico or that information and say, no,

Speaker1: [00:35:44] I'd love to, but that's probably the root cause I put money on that being the main issue, not the skill set. I mean, that being said, I'll definitely flip this over to anybody else who wants to chime in here. But I mean, look, man, like there's up work. There's five where you could start doing one off analytics projects. How if you want, man, you can you can do some data analytics for me with with my podcast metrics. I, you know, give you a good experience doing that if you want. But yeah, I mean, I'm willing to bet that that's one one part of it is

Speaker4: [00:36:18] One thing you could do. I know I have a lot of guys from India. What they've done is they've come over to the United States on an education visa for the Masters or the Bachelor or mostly master's degrees. And they've used their master's in educational visas to get a job. And while they're here, they've been sponsored and they will continue to get a job, some green cards, whatever. But they came over on education visas.

Speaker1: [00:36:42] Ok, yeah. And I think, you know, I'll turn this question over to Dave because I think they will have some really valuable advice here. So go for it.

Speaker2: [00:36:49] No pressure. OK, yeah. So a couple of things that popped to mind. And I don't mean to be I don't want to come across as an expert on your situation, Martin. So take this for whatever it's worth. So a couple of things. One, one of the things I always suggest folks do is to do market research, go look at a lot of job descriptions, a lot of job descriptions at companies and for roles that you would like to do and start tallying up all the various types of things that they were going to have. You do all the skills that they want and cross-reference. So, for example, if you're in Data, you're going to probably see SQL SQL mentioned a lot, either as a desired skill or an optional skill. If you don't have skill and maybe you do. I'm not saying that you don't. But if you don't get skill and so that's one aspect is like look and see what the markets actually demanding and make sure that you meet that once again, going to Greg's point of risk minimization. If you got the checkboxes, you're minimizing the risk for HRR and the recruiter in the hiring manager. So that's one constraint on that, because, quite frankly, depending on where you go, hiring manager may not even know it's Six Sigma is and what it means they're not going to know. So that's not going to help you out. If you're in manufacturing, if you if you want to go work at GE, they know it's Six Sigma is they know that. But a lot of other companies, they don't.

Speaker2: [00:38:03] A lot of hiring managers don't. But what they do know is the skills that they put in their job descriptions. So as long as you're matching that and checking those off, that's awesome. Another thing that you can do is certainly is also trying to flip from a push model to a pull model, which is instead of pushing out your resume and applications, keep doing that. Of course, I'm not saying don't do that, but also throw in a pull model, which is get active on social media, build up a Data portfolio project portfolio that's publicly available, get up a YouTube channel. Not to not to sound self-serving, but I've got a couple of videos of my YouTube channel around this that you might find potentially useful around how to do market research as well as to do Data what kinds of things you want to do for your Data portfolio projects to make sure they pop for hiring manager and get up on it on LinkedIn, you know, start posting it on YouTube. If you build up a big enough audience and if you get seen a lot, you might find people actually reaching out to you for opportunities and that that poor model is always better than the push model. If somebody contacts you and says, hey, I saw you on LinkedIn, I got an opportunity for you, you are so far up in terms of the competition and landing that job. It's just it's astronomically different. So that's a few things off the top of my head.

Speaker1: [00:39:13] Ok, thank you. Yeah, thanks, Dave. That was really, really awesome how you feel about that, Martin. Feel and feel good. Some advice here. I'm going to open this and

Speaker4: [00:39:22] I have one quick thing,

Speaker1: [00:39:24] Please. Absolutely. Man.

Speaker4: [00:39:25] Do do. Yes. A lot of times we fall for a little trap, little trap us inside of the resume. We always want to say, look at my skills, look at my skills, look at my skills, transform that into look what I've done, what I've solved, look what I've identified. If you move from that to there is going to get you places the skill piece of a small space for that for sure. But emphasize on look what I've done, look what I've identified, look what I've solved, but also figure out a way to tell the story around it so clearly that you don't have the reader make an effort to understand what you've done and how you went about identifying the issues and solving them. So ticked through that mind set, that framework to build your resume and. You will see more people responding to you because, you know, we are in an industry where we want to showcase our skills because we think this is the only way to get noticed. Is a genius. But nowadays we can find 20 geniuses. So how do you stand out? So make sure you kind of gauge your resume, gauge your portfolio in that sense so you can better place yourself with regards to the crowd.

Speaker1: [00:40:30] Absolutely. Greg, thank you very much. And just in case. Make sure you're talking about Six Sigma, talking about, you know, different industries. Just make sure that on your resume that you're not using, like, industry specific type of jargon. So kind of like it trying to explain in plain English what it was that you're doing. Right. So instead of like saying Six Sigma, you know, using Six Sigma lean processes to doing this. Isn't this like, you know, look at the actual stuff within it that you had done like that? Does that make sense? Like the actual like what Greg is saying? What did you actually do with it,

Speaker3: [00:41:03] For example, about what they were selling on the car reference of the ability to the hiring manager or the job description? In fact, for I have done that, of course. At first I just knew that, OK, I don't know SQL. I don't know the Tablo, I don't know Bauby or maybe not on medium or advanced way. And yet, I mean, I start putting those checkbox and I start just practicing and then moving on to the portfolio. I mean, I can put on my resume those successful Briagolong work done by analyzing data, even though they were not done by SQL or Tableau or something like that. And after that is our Kaggle competence or putting them on their portfolio of projects.

Speaker1: [00:41:51] I mean, I'd like to see just more real world type of projects. Right, because, I mean, you live in whatever city live in I just type in city name, open data portal and you can make a lot of big, major cities all throughout the world have these open Data portals that can be accessed by by anyone on the Internet. And you just take real world data and just do some real world. Interesting stuff, right?

Speaker2: [00:42:15] Yeah, I've got I was about to say. Yeah. Shameless plug. Check out my YouTube channel. I've got a recent video where I have a real world data analysis project using free data from the United States government. And it's actually it's actually based on a real project I did of my last job when I was an analytics person. So it's it's like taking industry data from the state of Texas and marrying it up with data from the U.S. Census Bureau and trying to find new and interesting things. And it's a great way to just like put it out there. Right. And if you do it just right, if you create a Data portfolio project with awesome code, it may be some great documentation and a nice YouTube video. And you put it all up and wrap it up. A nice little bonus GitHub thing. It becomes quite a showcase. And here's the thing to do. And this is something I mentioned in one of my videos on my YouTube channel is that I don't wait to start posting on social media when the sun start and posting every step of the journey because people love that stuff. Right. And it starts building up your following and starts building up a cache of posts on LinkedIn, for example, to go along with the final product. So don't wait until you're done. You know, you can post all of the sausage making and people love that stuff.

Speaker1: [00:43:22] They've got more

Speaker4: [00:43:23] Engagement on my post about the project than the actual end product, which is hilarious and happens all the time.

Speaker1: [00:43:29] Yeah, people like to hear about the process. I like to hear about what it took to get from A to B. The middle part is the most interesting part, right by Dave. If anybody can just dig up the video posted in the chat there, the video that Dave was talking about, I'll be sure to include then to the show notes that all 13 of you that are listening on the podcast have access to that. Let's go up to a question here. Actually, got a great comment here. If you can afford LinkedIn premium. Yeah, definitely use LinkedIn premium. I think it's well worth it might be a little bit pricey, but

Speaker3: [00:44:00] We're kind of mad at me. You might be able to get a free month, though, if you never used it. You can get a free month. Yeah. And if you want to if you go to cancel after your first month, I'll give you a discount on the second month. So maybe that's worth it. Try it out. And also, I will say just one little thing on that. Don't or don't use your free messages to like old email recruiters. That does nothing. But if you see somebody who says, hey, we're hiring, then that's the person that you want to email because they're expecting the message from that email, you know what I mean? They're expecting the message from you. Just it seems like common sense, but

Speaker1: [00:44:33] Yeah, I like this. Those little things are a little things that maybe just don't register that we need people to call out for us. So thank you very much. Anybody else have anything to say on this topic? Russell Russell keeps disappearing from my screen. It's still around. I don't like oh

Speaker4: [00:44:50] Yeah, I'm here. But I think I got flaky wi fi at the moment. I'm dropping in as the audio work. Yeah. We give you like. Well, so if I disappear, you can still hear me. I was just about to type in to build on Eric's point there about, you know, don't drop a message on. Someone using your emails, I'd say that's pretty good information for all messages. Try not to just drop a message to someone,

Speaker2: [00:45:18] Say, look, you know, I'm looking for a job.

Speaker4: [00:45:20] You get to know you first, you know, interact on some chance, respond to some of the comments, try and build up a rapport before you try to open that door. Because if you're just really cold, I've never met you before. You tried to force the door open, it's going to be less likely to open. So so try to try to kind of get a connection with people before you enter that avenue is possible. And the follow up question is, OK. So for me, like I do not like small talk, I struggle. I do not like the people message me and are like, hey, how are you doing? I'm just like, tell me, get to the ask, please. And I'm the same way. And so I guess like, is it just a different style or am I missing out by not doing that small talk in the beginning, the way I normally approach you just like yeah. I make it as an initial, as very targeted to you is just a different approach or should I be doing the small talk and maybe it's just like a cultural thing I'm just missing out on.

Speaker1: [00:46:16] Is this coming from the perspective of the message center or from the message receiver message center?

Speaker4: [00:46:22] Me sending I don't like the small talk and also receiving. I don't like the small talk.

Speaker1: [00:46:27] Yeah. I mean, for for sending. It's you can you don't have to just say, hey, how are you doing. I think something will be awesome to do. Is looking for the company that this person works on, probably has a blog post and that blog post probably has something tangentially related talking about Data size machine learning, whatever it is that you're interested in, try to find that thing that that that connects the company, your interest in that person and then talk to them about that. Just say, hey, look, I was looking at you guys, this blog. I saw this really cool article where you guys were doing this X, Y, Z thing. Man, I found that super fascinating. Were you fortunate enough to be able to to work on that project? If so, dude, I'm so jealous, man. That's so cool, right, that they go small talk, but you're you're small talking about you're coming at a big topic, if that makes sense. Right.

Speaker3: [00:47:12] I so I was I found an employee from a company I was interested in who had their own blog and they had written a post that I was legitimately interested and it wasn't even actually a Data related, it was just kind of about, I don't know, something, something personal to them. But it really resonated with me. And I actually just commented on their blog post, not even on like LinkedIn or anything, but I just commented and said, hey, I really like that. And I think maybe they had like a contact form. I filled that out to the emailed me back like, oh, hey, yeah, cool. And I told I was interested in the company as well and there was no small talk, you know, how's the weather, how's your mom and things like that. Like it was just like, hey, I really like this post and it really like a legitimately connected with me. And they were like, oh that's cool. Yeah. Hey, they emailed me like two weeks later. I was like, hey, this job just came up. I think you might be interested in you might want to apply for. I was like, wow, you even remember that I'm a human, you know, so I don't I don't like small talk. Yeah. That's the slimy networking feeling that I hate. But like like if you, like, legitimately have a connection with something that somebody said, like, I feel a little vulnerable. They just throw it out there. People are pretty about it.

Speaker1: [00:48:18] Yeah. I just take a general I mean, genuine interest in the person, not just the interest in your own self-interest, because if you're coming at somebody's message to them and it's like purely from a self-interest type of perspective, do that comes off, people can pick up on it. You're not going to response back. So, yeah, make it just genuinely be interested. You can find something interesting about anyone. This is general comment. So, Marcus, I get any other comments or things off that if not elicited,

Speaker4: [00:48:47] That was great. I gonna try some new things out that I'm in.

Speaker1: [00:48:50] Allissa, are you still here? Yes.

Speaker6: [00:48:54] Yes. Go for it. So I you're working as a data analyst. For six years I've been trying to gain experience with data science for the past year. I'm trying to switch, but I'm also like Spencer battling justice and Joe and just want like not feeling like I have enough experience and knowledge when talking about my experience in interviews. So I love anyones advice on this.

Speaker1: [00:49:19] All right. So so it seems like two questions. Correct me if I'm wrong there. The first question is how to deal with imposter syndrome. Second question is how to talk about your projects in an interview. Yes.

Speaker6: [00:49:31] Yes, basically two questions.

Speaker1: [00:49:33] So, yeah, I'll be I'll be answering the first half and I'll get you can get philosopher for her on you here. But imposter syndrome. To me it feels like a fixation on some external thing that we perceive that we should be like, oh we should be this model of protection. And I think it's just because our society, our culture, we have a very, very unhealthy habit of making a product, the end result, the goal, instead of just the process of reasoning to that goal. Right. And we see this in a lot of activities in our daily life. We get fixated on the intended goal, you're fixated on the end result and completely miss out just in the process of achieving it. Um, yeah, we just think that there's a magical point that we'll get to and then we'll be happy, you know, who will no longer have to be this imposter or real. Um, so I think, too, to overcome that imposter syndrome, I just focus on the process. Right. Can we focus on the process, the desired product? The outcome will take care of itself with ease. It just becomes a by product focus on the product immediately begin. You know, when you focus on the end result, you immediately begin to just fight yourself and you get the sense of agitation like you have a perception of this is how I should be, but I'm not that right. Well, how about you just focus on the work that it takes to get from this thing to what you think you should be. So that's you know, that's that's it. I'm going to open this up to, uh, to anybody who wants to answer this question, let me know. But I'm going to go to, uh, let's first go to Vivian on this one and then from Vivian, if anybody else go for it.

Speaker6: [00:51:10] I'm I'm sorry. I was messaging Eric. What was the question?

Speaker1: [00:51:16] So so I'll have I'll have you answer this first question that she has about how to deal with imposter syndrome.

Speaker6: [00:51:25] Well, I guess that I don't know that I'm a good answer for this because I have not solved this problem in myself either. I just the only thing I feel like I really know how to do or what to do is just to keep going, keep trying, keep keep, you know, being uncomfortable, like and like learn to sit in that discomfort in some way, like, learn to like sit with it and like, OK, I feel like an impostor, I feel I'm qualified but like I'm going to just go on and do my best anyway and try to just like, you know, no need to panic, let myself sit with that and then like, move on. Anyway, that's the only thing I really strategy I've really developed so far.

Speaker1: [00:52:04] So yeah. I mean, imposter syndrome. It's like we're casting a judgment on ourself. Right. And judgment is just, you know, judging anything is just very immense waste of energy. Right. Um, so I'm going to skip the philosophizing. Let's go to Greg for the part about how to talk about your experience and in interviews, because I feel like you're on a roll with this topic today, Greg. So go for it.

Speaker4: [00:52:30] Yeah, it's a process. First of all, it has to be a conscious decision to test assumptions you're making about yourself. So if you're taking off, I'm not too good at this. Test it. Right. So you won't know until you test it and confirm or reject that hypothesis. Right. So quick example. I've used LinkedIn to test myself. I put a post out there. I measure how many people say you're crazy or I don't understand what you're saying versus people saying, yes, that makes sense, but et cetera, et cetera, or whatever it is, I agree with myself that if I heard somebody saying something in the lines of this doesn't make sense, et cetera, that I will take it as a feedback to improve myself. And over time, I felt a little bit more comfortable sharing things that made more sense. Not that I was trying to eliminate. Anybody would disagree, but I saw somebody disagreeing as an opportunity for me to grow. So that was my journey about LinkedIn to remove that imposter syndrome. Eurostep also is to join groups. You showing up here today is also another opportunity for you to kind of speak out and express yourself. And over time you see how the community receives you and talk to you and give you feedback about where you are.

Speaker4: [00:53:41] And that should be reinforcement points for you to reanalyze in. Kind of, you know, again, test those assumptions you've made about yourself already. True. On a well founded or not. If not, how do I consciously remove them and move forward? But the key is to take action, be conscious about those assumptions you're making about yourself. Why am I expecting myself to be like this when I say something? Why isn't it coming out as this level? Is this true? Could have I done better make a list of those and then test them all, test them all somewhere, test them with somebody else, be frank about it too. So find somebody you can confide to tell them about how you feel and then tell them to ask them to watch you as you speak and give you feedback about or the work you do gives you feedback about where you could improve or whether he's good. And those are the things that, again, it's not something you get rid of right away. It's conscious work on a daily basis. And community work is definitely something that can help you. The last thing you want to do is isolate yourself in feeling this way. Hope that helps.

Speaker1: [00:54:50] Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And how about the other questions she was asked? And she was in another question based on how to how to to talk about projects and work experience, rather how to talk about work experience in the interview and such. The way that we can showcase that we're able to to do the thing,

Speaker4: [00:55:12] I guess you really have to have a great year for for for the questions, right. The assumption here that I will take is you've done your homework in terms of identifying the job you want to do to work for. I'd like to say to everybody, when you identify a job that you want to have prior to the interview, let your mind go all directions with questions and answer them ahead of time. Practice, practice, practice. Anticipate the kind of questions that they will ask. And most of the time a company who knows what they're looking for will ask you questions pertaining to the pain points that they're trying to to solve. So by anticipating that's why you have to prepare and in preparation, when the question actually comes, you'll feel comfortable pulling out experience from your past to respond in. What you're doing here is building the bridge with similar issues that you solved pertaining to your experience to showcase to the idea that you can also solve similar issues that they're having. So all of that comes to whether you're writing a document that you're getting, you're trying to get alignment from an audience or interviewing. You want to prepare ahead of time and think about all possible. And of course, you want to get to 100 percent of all possible questions or you want to prepare yourself for all of these things coming at you so you can feel comfortable expressing yourself this way. And don't forget, when you answer, you have to also put a framework to it. You want to know what you're identified, what where your task, how you went about it, what were the results? You have to be really tactical about that. And it also be open to expanding on this if the area feels like what you responded to wasn't enough or if you have to give additional examples. Again, it's all about anticipation and preparation.

Speaker1: [00:56:57] And to add to that point, to the job posting like a syllabus. Right. I mean, I don't mean to say treat the interview as if it's an exam, but look at every job description that you're walking into an interview for. Look at each and every bullet point and each bullet point. Try to connect it to a previous experience that you've done. Right. Whether that previous experience was actual work experience or project experience or whatever, find some connection that hits that bullet point and then practice talking about it in the star format. There's a situation where I did this, this and this. My job was to do this, this and this. And then the analysis I did was this, this and this. And as a result of this and just practice, practice, practice, imagine yourself in interviews like this and literally are going to walk. Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in an interview, Dave. Go for it.

Speaker2: [00:57:48] So I don't know is where you're at in terms of what what would be a viable strategy for you. But here's here's a real good one that can get past both the imposter syndrome as well as prove to potential employers that you've got skills and that's to teach something and ideally teach it in some sort of public venue, like try and land a slot Data science go or some other online conference, maybe one of Kate's CV, do something, one of Kate's Data Data Katie conferences or something like that. Or if that's not going to work as well, start up a YouTube channel and like pick topics that you have skills in and create tutorials on them, create high quality tutorials on them and what that does, that provides proof. So, for example, if you create a really cool tutorial and you get a lot of comments on YouTube where people like, oh my God, this is awesome, you changed my life. This is a career changing kind of video for me that provides proof that you have skills to somebody who observes that and also the sheer act of going through, creating that and delivering that helps a lot with imposter syndrome as well, especially if you can do especially you can get to some presentations at conferences, which these days actually not all that difficult in the old days used to be really difficult because people paid like thousands of dollars to go to conferences. So the bar was really high. But all these online conferences springing up, lots of opportunities to do stuff like that. Again, I'll just say some people, when they think about doing something like that, putting themselves out there in that kind of way, it makes them feel really scared inside. And if that's a bridge too far across, that's cool. But it is powerful stuff, especially the live presentation stuff.

Speaker1: [00:59:19] Absolutely. Thank you very much for that, Dave. And Data Virtual, by the way, they are community partners with the Data Community Content Creators Award, hosted live on LinkedIn June. Twenty second you guys go vote register for that Data high school will be given away free premium tickets to do some so-called ritual. And guess what? Back as the emcee of the song is called Virtual Once Again. So I'll be emceeing that thing and I'll be at a booth as well at the booth. So right now, let's open it back up to Alyssa Elyssa. I give you a chance to respond to everything you've heard. And then after Alyssa, let's hear from Jacob. And then, by the way, Ben Taylor is in the building. Ben, what is up and if you can, Allissa? After you give us that response to whatever you've heard, restate the questions that we can hear from Ben as well.

Speaker6: [01:00:12] Yes, thank you for the feedback. It all helped. I think it just helps to hear that a lot of people are going through the process. And it's not just me because everyone here is very experienced. The fact that you still go through it, it does help a lot with the whole feeling. But I do I do like that idea of just reaching out to communities and will talk to other people about the science and just be able to teach. I think that will help confirm. I do have a right to be in the field and I write to to get a job in the field. So that really helps. And you asked to repeat my questions. So the first one was, you know, how to overcome it, how to sit down. And the second one is just if you have a positive dynamic, how do you go about not talking about your experience in interviews?

Speaker1: [01:01:03] So let's hear from a listener first from Jacob. Jacob, what's the comment on this? And that Jacob will go to the one and only Ben Taylor. So, Jacob,

Speaker4: [01:01:10] Thanks for the opportunity. So I think I used to be in a similar situation. OK, I think I was supposed to go. I think one we are able to accommodate is the I. I see it as me being queer, not trying to trying to learn, because if you if if you're not cross, it means some of those rights. If your cousin means your life long enough to go to my school, I'm not good enough. I have to keep blaming myself. And then again, also, like you've mentioned, psittacosis you we keep learning to die. So I have some conditions and so probably means I have to do it in school. I don't want masterbation.

Speaker1: [01:01:56] Thank you very much, Jacob. Let's go to Ben. Ben, Ben, good to see you again. Soopers have you back, man.

Speaker4: [01:02:03] How are you doing? Good. Yeah. Living on plane. I'm sober right now. That's good. That's good, man. So imposter syndrome. How do you how do you move. Oh man. I didn't mind. It's probably good. I'm taking a break. It's pretty hard. Hard in a good way. Imposter syndrome. I think. I think the interesting, interesting thing about it is there's kind of this evolution. So I remember starting out is more of a junior engineer. You're terrified about job security. And then the next step as you evolve in your career is you get to market security. So when you truly make that switch from job security to market security, it's not the end of the world if you get fired because you now have market security. But I don't want to pretend that impostor syndrome goes away because the hope in a in a good career is you keep taking bigger and bigger challenges and bigger and bigger risks where the risk is always there. And so I had something funny happen a couple weeks ago where my Gmail password was changed because of something going on with the security of the company. But in Data robot, if you're getting fired or deactivated, that's one of the processes like you get deactivated out of Slack and Gmail. And so it's really funny because I think I would say that I have no like I don't have any kinks, my armor. But that was an example a couple of weeks ago where I'm like, oh, I actually do have some things in my armor.

Speaker4: [01:03:15] Like, I am feeling that level of anxiety, like, oh, like if I was fired from Data robot, they would they would let me know first. Right. Like my boss would tell me, like I want to find out this way. He would just say, Bennu, you fucked up and you deserve to be fired. And I would say you're right, like I deserve to be fired. But I guess the other thing I'll say is really, if you take the broader view in life, there are things that are much worse than getting fired from a job. And that and I've known people that have been fired from a job where I fired them. And it's not you're not there's nothing bad about you. You're not a failure. There's nothing wrong with you. Good people get fired from good jobs. And so I think the the good thing to get past in syndrome is don't overthink it there. We're here to live. We're here to have a life. We've got families. But other things, you making a certain amount of money or charging through your career is not the most important thing. But you've got a great community of mentors and they can all say they've been there before and apparently they've been there recently and they figure it out.

Speaker1: [01:04:08] Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, that's the one of the great things about this career, is you're always having to learn something new, something interesting. And that means that there's always room to get better. And like the whole point that the whole point of being one of the great things about being human is improving and getting better at things. And if you get paid to do that, like, holy shit, man, that's a hell

Speaker4: [01:04:31] Of a job. But I going to to failure is really celebrated in the space because like Data robot, we're hiring Data scientists as fast as we can if they have four years of experience. And I was skiing with someone who was mentioning their two years into their Data science journey and they think they're going to be fired. So they've like they failed at Data Science at this job. And I was saying, we love that. We love that like you have. You have tried data science as hard as you can in this company, in your face planting. That is fantastic because your opinions matter. You can talk about things about, oh, we don't do it that way. Why don't you do it that way? Well, didn't work at my last. So there's something about being seasoned and being experienced, and that doesn't have to be after win, win, win, win, win, big epic fail, there's something that I totally welcome with that, especially if you're introspective and reflective on why that happened. So is anyone making mistakes here? Have you made any mistakes? And there's a quote that I read the other day is that the number one enemy to success isn't failure? Is boredom like that? So let's take failure as let's let's turn around on this. Let's change our perception of what failure means is boredom, cash, boredom. You're you're increasing your probability of success. Be mindful of those like that.

Speaker1: [01:05:44] I like that. But I don't see any of the questions, the chats. If anybody has a question, just go ahead and put it in the chat. But I would love to get Ben's perspective on the question that we're talking about kind of towards the top of the hour. Spencer Spencer is still here, but Spencer is a he's he's fresh out of, not fresh out of, but he's completed high school, hasn't completed a four year degree, and he's doing his boot camps and with degrees and things like that. And he's wondering, man, like, do we actually need formal education to be in Data science?

Speaker4: [01:06:13] So I know two people that don't have a college degree and they're one of those making over two hundred thousand years Data scientists. And the other one might actually I was getting a text from him a couple days ago. He might be going towards that in the next week or two. And so if you can work at a job and go from junior to senior Data scientists and becoming more and more of a believer, that that's less required. Because I study chemical engineering, I didn't learn anything in my curriculum about Data science. I learned about classical predictive models from the lens of chemical engineering, but I was very much merit based. And so I think it's about getting through that initial hurdle of job success. Yeah, I wouldn't really if someone is applying for a job right now and they had no college background and they've gone through a boot camp, I'd care much more about what do I think they can do this quarter or this year? And I guess I think it's mattering less, which is interesting because I used to expect all my kids to college. And now I don't know, especially in the next ten years, I might know even less that maybe it really doesn't matter.

Speaker1: [01:07:11] Yeah, I like speaking of kids going to college. I don't think I would force my kid to go to a formal institution to learn anything like just do it on your own if you have to, or through some type of structured program but doesn't need to go on a four year university or anything like that. Greg, over here has a question for Ben. So, Greg, go for it.

Speaker4: [01:07:32] Yeah, Ben, I'd like to know how how's your search for a crazy guy who's doing too well? Did you like to learn what kind of framework are you putting together to kind of kind of find somebody like that? So the interesting thing is I think some of these people are just out there in the world where they already have a reputation. So my my most interesting lead right now, I was actually just texting him on the phone. His introduction comes through one of our other executives. So I think one of our other CEOs was aware of this individual. And I've been doing a lot of interviews lately. And it's interesting because I'm doing interviews for this position and a lot of the people I interview are good, but good is not what I want, which is interesting because normally you'd say like, oh, you seem really good. Like I what I'm looking for is like creative misfit, genius, psycho, like someone who's just psycho, not in a negative way, like just someone who's not motivated by money. They're motivated by working on impossible problems with interesting people. So have a better update for you, Greg. Hopefully next month. I actually have some announcements of key people we've hired. But it is interesting in my mindset, because you interview good people and normally you want to hire them, interview good people.

Speaker4: [01:08:44] Are you good? You have potential over this role? I most want to hire people that intimidate me. I want to hire people that could potentially outrank me or get me fired, become my boss. That's who I want to hire. It's interesting, right? Because that's why I'm asking is is that what's the threshold for someone like that? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This level of crazy is getting you out the door, sir. We won't do. We're not that crazy. Are you planning to sell that ceiling or no ceiling at all? I think I've already set that ceiling because I one of my projects right now, I want to get arrested. And apparently AIs having a conversation where someone is saying it would need board approval for me to get arrested right now. And I think that's funny. So it makes me want to get arrested even more for this particular project. And so, like, I don't know, I think when it comes to crazy and nuts, I probably have left the reservation. But but it's really fun to hire people where you realize, oh, they're crazy in a different way. They're willing to do things that I would never do.

Speaker4: [01:09:38] But I think you have to have an adults inside to kind of understand because you can have cross the line. That's crazy. You can actually do damage. You can like you can do damage for a company where they're now having to fix that. And that's not a good thing. So you definitely want to do crazy, but you want to have other people in the room, like that's a part of the KMO and other people to kind of decide, I did have a project, I won't share it with the group. So I'm kind of embarrassed by it. But I did have a project that was shut down where they decided it. Wasn't it would not be appropriate for a company of our brand to be associated in any way with something that sounded like a lot of fun but involve guns and different things. And so I didn't just go do it. I had a conversation internally and they decided that that isn't a good thing to do. But after the IPO and maybe we'll go do it anyway. Maybe I'll get it anyway. Celebrate everyone on the call, everyone on the call that wants to pay their way. We'll go.

Speaker1: [01:10:28] I'm down. I'm down. I just of my second shot.

Speaker4: [01:10:31] Well it has Canada going with the vaccines I guess.

Speaker1: [01:10:35] So I'm in I'm in Manitoba, which is like apparently the hotbed of covid for like the world, not the world, but North America by far. Yeah. My daughter was in rough shape. But that sounds doesn't I see Alissa's that friend or partner. There's this you have a good time. Check this out with a guy has a gun. If anybody has questions and let me know otherwise I'll start to wrap it up. It looks like there are no other questions in the chat. It looks like Jordan has a comment here. Just, you know, been there since inturn for a month. People I work with have been helpful. So people are supportive, open minded. How? That's great advice. Does doesn't look like there's any other questions. So I guess we could begin to wrap it up. Guys, thank you so much for hanging out today for the Data signs. Happy hour. Shout out to everybody that came through to shout out to everybody that I didn't hear from. Rena What's up, Kelly? What's up, Marina? GI GI Henry Timothee. What's up, man? How are you guys doing? If any of you guys you know, we've got a question, now's the time, because otherwise I'm going to wrap it up. So, Timothy Kelly. Gee, Henry, anybody has questions, let me know.

Speaker4: [01:11:44] Yeah, I have a question. I just, you know, thankful for being in this space for all of you and looking into it a lot more of ours. So thanks

Speaker1: [01:11:52] So much. Yeah, right. Well, thank you for coming here, man. Appreciate appreciate having you here and hope to see you here, uh, more and more often. And for those of you who who who feel bad about showing up late, don't worry. I actually have a Sunday officer session as well that was sponsored by Comet Amelle. There's always a link for it in the show. Notes if you go to a bit early, Beitar Alewife Forward Slash Comet Dash Emelle Dash o h. You can register for this Sunday Officer Sessions. They're just as awesome as this, so I hope to see you guys there again. Don't forget to vote for the Data Community Content Creators Award that is going to be epic, is going to have amazing speakers such as Greg Kookier, Ben Taylor. We're also going to hear from Sarah Knebel, see what else can we hear from Dalyan Aluf? He has got no doubt that a man like she's freakin awesome guy, Jordan Morreau, Gilbert, Achelen, boom. So all amazing speakers. We got free giveaways happening from packed publications and manning publications. They'll be given away free ebooks.

Speaker1: [01:12:59] Like I mentioned, there is Data says go virtual DSTO virtual premium tickets that will be given away as well. We're only giving away people who have been to get some stuff and all the freebies to people who are registered since we're randomly choosing from the registration link. So be sure to vote and register. You can also have an opportunity to and a half hour mentoring session one on one with me, courtesy of this dream job today, today's AIs dream job. If you guys are going to dig it out, cold forward slash free dash training, you can get a bunch of actionable advice that you can implement today and, you know, start getting a leg up on that job search. I feel like I have stalled enough and there has been no last minute questions that come into the chat. So, guys, thank you very much for hanging out. Appreciate having all of you guys here. Is good seeing you again. Remember, you've got one life on this planet. Why not try to do some big cheers, everyone.

Speaker4: [01:13:51] Thanks. I pray for hosting.

Speaker1: [01:13:52] Absolutely, man.