HH75-01-04-2022_mixdown.mp3

Harpreet: [00:00:08] What's up, everybody? Welcome welcome to the of data science happy hour. It is Friday, April 1st. My gosh, I wish I had a April Fools joke video, but I don't. However, this is the 75th happy hour session.

Harpreet: [00:00:22] Well, 75.

Harpreet: [00:00:23] Weeks in a row.

Harpreet: [00:00:24] Without you doing this.

Harpreet: [00:00:25] Thing. I'm pretty sure Russell Willis has been here for all seven of those, so he's been at this thing way more than I have.

Harpreet: [00:00:32] Shout out to everybody in the building.

Harpreet: [00:00:34] We got Eric Sims.

Harpreet: [00:00:35] Of Fox shot in the belly of the building c company set out to.

Harpreet: [00:00:40] Naresh and Russell Willis and of course, the one and only Eric Gitonga. Eric, one of these days, dude, I'm going to I'm going to start to ponder that is one of.

Harpreet: [00:00:48] These days I'm gonna say something that makes it very effective Monday. It's been a while. I got to say stuff that makes Eric Gitonga reflect. That is the goal for the next quarter at least.

Harpreet: [00:00:58] Once they get onto reflective.

Harpreet: [00:01:00] Monday. Shout out to everybody joining in super smart to have all you guys here. Had a great week of just.

Harpreet: [00:01:08] Running around doing errands. Man.

Harpreet: [00:01:09] That was this was the week, the transition between jobs, right? So last Friday was my last week at Comet. I started at.

Harpreet: [00:01:15] Pachyderm on Monday, April 4th.

Harpreet: [00:01:17] So looking forward to that.

Harpreet: [00:01:19] This week had an opportunity to.

Harpreet: [00:01:20] Kind of catch up on some stuff and.

Harpreet: [00:01:24] Learn stuff and run a bunch of errands. And then we'll be taking over in a couple minutes here.

Harpreet: [00:01:31] So announcement is that the latest episode podcast is released with the one and only. Andrew Jones Okay. So definitely go ahead and check that out. If you guys got questions, drop them right here and chat, drop them on LinkedIn. Hopefully somebody could funnel the questions from LinkedIn into the Zoom meeting here that would be super helpful to to help our host [00:02:00] then out for yet. There we go man I'm passing the controls over to then then my man thank you so much for for doing this for for hosting once again, man. I always appreciate that. I appreciate the community.

Harpreet: [00:02:11] Coming up and helping.

Harpreet: [00:02:12] Me I to take care of a sick wife and a cranky baby right now. So I appreciate you helping out.

Harpreet: [00:02:20] So you guys take care. Have a good rest. Afternoon, evening. Whatever. I'll be watching on YouTube.

Harpreet: [00:02:26] The event.

Vin: [00:02:28] Good. I'd say enjoy normally, but survive might be the thing. Hopefully not as sick as it sounds.

Harpreet: [00:02:38] All right.

Vin: [00:02:39] They gave me the reins. And I've got a first question because it usually takes people of 5 minutes to funnel in. Everybody's fashionably late. So while people are funneling in who won April Fool's Day, what posts, what.

Harpreet: [00:02:54] What.

Vin: [00:02:55] Brand, what, anything have you seen that one April Fool's Day? Because my winner is Lego. They came out with just a really short video about Lego blocks that will autonomously get out of your way so you no longer step on Lego blocks. I do not know if you've ever stepped on a Lego block, but it feels horrible. And for me, that was the winner. I don't know how you beat that autonomous Lego bots. It just simple looked like fun. Anybody have any other ones? What? We're waiting for people to funnel in and before we get to their first real actual question.

Speaker6: [00:03:30] I really like StackOverflow because you can like change their UI, match Facebook or whatever. It's that one was cool. I just saw one about Twitter. Tweeted that they're working on an edit button.

Harpreet: [00:03:42] My ha ha. Yeah. Nice.

Vin: [00:03:47] Right. What else? Anybody else have one? That was good. That one. Or at least sort of one. The Internet. We got a second vote for Stack Overflow. That was definitely Stack was a good one. All [00:04:00] right. Well, apparently, brands, you guys need to get up on that April Fool's Day. Take this opportunity to advertise market, make yourself a little bit more fun, more enjoyable, because it sounds like, oh, I got one.

Harpreet: [00:04:17] While I'm still around. I was watching.

Harpreet: [00:04:20] Watching some cartoons.

Harpreet: [00:04:22] The Sun earlier today and there was a ad on YouTube. So Canada has this ultra, ultra cheap airline called Swoop Airlines. And Swoop Airlines had this commercial going on about how they created a microwave that is going to be on the.

Harpreet: [00:04:39] Airplane, that if you want to bring on your own food, they will microwave it for you for $1 a minute. Which is funny because you can't even put a microwave.

Harpreet: [00:04:48] On a plane. That's safety.

Harpreet: [00:04:51] Concern. But just the way they presented the ad was super hilarious. So you guys do get a chance to check that out.

Harpreet: [00:04:58] How funny that. All right. Well, it looks like nobody's.

Vin: [00:05:04] Being fashionably late. What's going on here? Sorry, Eric.

Speaker6: [00:05:08] The goofy one. I just saw one from trigger grills. They said that they have the weed pellets thing. That's a little. I mean, I guess you got to know your audience if they're going to be into it or not. So I love I love how I guess the times have changed over the years.

Vin: [00:05:28] You know, it's funny because we don't. Not everybody here is from America. So that is a very American audience, only kind of joke for it just would not play in any other country.

Harpreet: [00:05:39] So.

Vin: [00:05:41] All right. Let's dove into the first question. What I want to do to get a kicked off. Obviously, if you have questions, throw them into the chat. I will somehow check LinkedIn and multitask a little bit here. But if you've got questions, throw them over to me. But I'm going to get started with something that I've been wondering about for a while, and I've seen multiple [00:06:00] people posting on LinkedIn about this. How do you figure out who you should be learning from? Because there is so much good content out there. But the problem is there's also some really bad content where you see people who are doing educational content who. They're not right. I mean, they post some stuff on a regular basis that's just not factually correct or potentially not best practices. As soon as all the time. And I don't want to be the I don't want to be the person that jumps in and, you know, corrects people when they're wrong. But it seems like it would be really hard to figure out if you're learning who you should be learning from, what's right, what's wrong. So does anybody have any tips? How do you look at content and say, this person knows what they're talking about? Or maybe this person isn't somebody that I need to learn from?

Speaker6: [00:06:56] I think. I mean, occasionally. Occasionally I see something where somebody shares like some that's not really a best practice and try it's not that common which is nice for me at least. And I just try to engage in conversation about it because, you know, just like with the. When we see outrageous, outrageous news or, you know, clickbait headlines, a lot of times it's like if you know the fuller picture of what someone's talking about, sometimes it can kind of clarify that, you know, maybe they're maybe the way that they were approaching it is a little different then. I mean, then there's the other side. Then there's the other side of sometimes people just throw stuff out there that's just wrong. And so for me, for me, I think the the biggest thing is. To me, I'd like to get a second opinion and being part of a real being part of a real community because somebody who's just a talking head like I don't [00:08:00] I don't know them. I don't know them at all. And so they don't they don't necessarily have my trust. And so I think that I'm generally a pretty trusting person, probably overly trusting. But when it comes to just like believing everything that I read on towards data science and taking that as like the gospel or wherever and just believing that it's all right, I think it's just so important to be able to talk about it, try it out, double check it, ask Russell whatever to just be able to have a discussion with real people talking about real things and figure out if it actually holds water. I think such a low tech answer.

Vin: [00:08:39] About answer.

Harpreet: [00:08:42] I can make that even more low tech if you like. I'd equate that to just general websites, you know, Google or your your favorite search engine. Be very careful what you wish for. Don't take the first things that come back in.

Vin: [00:08:56] The search results always.

Harpreet: [00:08:58] Verify and validate everything that you get. And if it's not in your facility to check it by other means, then. Forums such as this. Happy Hours is a great place to come and speak to other people who know other bits. So you know, just as you've done tonight, then throw a question out there to other people and check it if you're not certain. You know, I check things every day with with as many people as I possibly can and double check things that I'm very confident with with a with a Web search as well. But every time you Web searching, don't take that first answer that comes back. Verify and validate everything.

Speaker6: [00:09:38] I think that's one benefit of using something like StackOverflow instead of LinkedIn, because for whatever reason, you know, people are less people like to get on to LinkedIn and you know, you know, philosophize about whatever sometimes they and it may be something that they are or are not like qualified to do. And there's like some people [00:10:00] will just like drop like that. I don't know. I'm kind of curious emoji on that rather than like, like blatantly like commenting like actually I think that's crap. Whereas on StackOverflow someone would be like, Yo, that is so not true. Like, you can't, like, that doesn't make sense in this context because if you have such and such a variable type that will break down like I see that all the time when I'm asking questions about SQL where they're like, you know, for like 99% of the cases, this is a perfect answer. But then you've got somebody who's going to jump in with that edge case and be like, Oh, well, that might give you some date time conflicts and such and such a small scenario. And like, I don't have a problem seeing that. Maybe it seems like there being a little bit of a pedantic jerk sometimes, but it could be valuable for somebody in that 1% of, you know, small, small cases. And so in that way, I think that StackOverflow is kind of the the higher tech or maybe Reddit, but probably more StackOverflow is kind of because it seems I feel like it's a nice, nice middle ground where you can have like conversation to get technical answers but also have some discussion and also scroll through to see like, yes, this is the accepted answer, but the answer below, it may actually be better or more recent or you know, and that kind of helps me see and learn as I go.

Vin: [00:11:18] I always worry about Reddit. I mean, wow, StackOverflow is mean, but Reddit's another level. All right. Anybody else want to chime in on this? Because, I mean, it's this is something that I think a lot of people that are trying to break into the field have.

Harpreet: [00:11:34] Trouble with.

Vin: [00:11:35] Is you have your standard learning.

Harpreet: [00:11:38] Path.

Vin: [00:11:39] But you have more. There's something else that you need. There's something else that you're missing. You're Googling things. You're listening to people who are putting out YouTube videos and there's a ton of content out there. So I mean, Costa sent sent on a, you know, I'm kind of throwing it out to everybody, but kind of [00:12:00] want to hear what both of you have to say about it to.

Harpreet: [00:12:06] Yeah. Just like Russell and Eric's already said, I think, like, validating cross checking, like looking at multiple different sources definitely helps. And also, I think there is value in recognizing what a platform is for and then using that platform for that purpose. Right. Certainly, if I'm trying to if I'm stuck, you know, coding something and I'm looking for an answer, I'm not going to look for it on LinkedIn. Right. That's not the source for that. So, yeah, just there are thought leaders, there are folks who are building a personal brand and I really respect that. I think that's very important. Self advocacy is very important, but you have to recognize as a consumer of content is that you should take everything with a grain of salt. And I think the best content creators recognize actually state that this is my opinion, this is where this is coming from. I know this other school of thought, etc., etc..

Vin: [00:13:11] I like putting the words I think in front of my posts, but it seems like people don't read those two words. Or sometimes. Yeah, but you're right. Linkedin not the greatest source.

Harpreet: [00:13:26] I mean, from a technical learning standpoint, yeah, I mean, LinkedIn wasn't really built for that and the community doesn't really engage in that manner. So I mean, yeah, I mean, StackOverflow is totally different. Again, medium is different and there are different levels, right? Yeah. It's really about understanding where to go for what kind of information you're looking for. Right. For me, it's literally always I'll just straight up Google it and if I see Reddit threads come up, I'll follow up. If I see [00:14:00] StackOverflow follow comes up, I'll follow it. If it's YouTube videos, sure. I kind of go a bit scattergun because the things I searched for can sometimes be a bit esoteric and vague. So you sometimes have to piece together bits of information that you see in three or four different locations. So it's quite rare that you'll find, oh, this is my exact problem. Erm, unsolved. So yeah, it really is quite exploratory in many ways. I don't know what I've already missed from what Russell and Eric and myself have said so far. But yeah, that would be my very. High inflation, $0.02 on it.

Vin: [00:14:43] Do I want to? I'm guessing you've seen bad content, especially in your.

Harpreet: [00:14:48] Space.

Vin: [00:14:49] For just educating people trying. And what I'm asking you about is how do you, as somebody who's trying to break into the field, who really doesn't have that frame of reference yet to tell the difference between this is quality and this is somebody who's kind of talking past their capabilities. How do you tell the difference?

Harpreet: [00:15:09] Yeah. I thought a lot about this. I think I would definitely go check the person out, you know, see what they've done, not just on LinkedIn, but probably other places. Check out the content. I would also see like is commenting on what they're posting so not just likes right. That can be gamed with actual comments where people are giving feedback. I think that's a good one. And just look for a cycle of longevity to where if the person has been consistently posting good stuff and there's probably a chance that people like it. But again, there's, you know, and I always try and I think separate, I would say actual content producers and doers versus what I would call like what kind of thought leader people. So there's a lot of people in the space [00:16:00] that I think I don't know that they know much about. I but they certainly know have a lot of opinions about the industry as a whole I would say. Or where or how it's going to help people like farm colonies on Mars or something like that. But like, you know what I'm saying? So I think there's a lot of but it's like any field, there's a lot of content out there. And so data is attractive for a lot of reasons because I mean. You can definitely pull from a lot of I mean, there's definitely some content people out there that are pulling from, I would say, old math papers and stats and stuff and just reposting like Central Limit Theorem. And I think that's content. It's useful to some people, but I don't know, I guess you could just have what you're looking for. So.

Vin: [00:16:53] Very close.

Harpreet: [00:16:53] Yeah.

Harpreet: [00:16:54] Yeah. I'm going to jump back on that, actually. So if I had to look for one thing, if I didn't know or if I was pretty new to the field and I had to earmark, okay, this person is actually knows how to implement something or knows how to fix a problem that I had. Is does does the source come with examples or links to examples? Right. If it's not got examples, it's probably quite theoretical. And whether the person knows what they're talking about or not is irrelevant because it's difficult for you as someone who's new to the field to make that leap from the theoretical discussion to the practical example. Right. So it might give a decent theoretical background to it, but anything with examples is probably going to be more likely to give you that. Technical Foundation. Here's an example of how it works. Like I found myself in that situation when I was testing logging this week. The most basic of seemingly the most basic of things in Python, right? I understood so much more about logging handlers and stream handlers and things like that [00:18:00] and tied it back to like some of the stuff that I've done in the past. And essentially until I saw examples of it, I didn't quite understand why certain loggers worked in a certain way and others worked slightly differently. Right. So examples, I guess.

Vin: [00:18:19] That's it's actually a really good point. You see so much content out there and it's just like it's a wall of text and there's no tangible there's no tangible anything connected with it. I can tell you in my own writing, a lot of times I'll write my.

Harpreet: [00:18:35] Thoughts.

Vin: [00:18:36] And my way of thinking and my way of doing it. And I've started realizing very recently, No, I need to start linking to three, four or five, six, sometimes different sources, different ways of thinking and doing things, because there isn't just one way. So yeah, no, that's a great point. Russell Yeah, go ahead.

Harpreet: [00:18:55] So just adding to some of the other questions, some of the other answers. Sorry. And picking back up on the on the forum that you're looking at. Bear in mind that LinkedIn does have some great nuggets of valid information out there, but it's primarily a social media platform. People are trying to drive engagement. So you might find posts there that are intentionally trigger posts to try and just drive engagement in the knowledge that there's going to be some some adjustment to the post thereafter. Or maybe there's a little bit of kind of social media AB testing going on there, you know, where they're putting posts out to gauge what the response is going to be like and they try the same post in a different ways, which can put different slants on it. So if it's something that's about a particularly technical item, you know, you've got to be careful. So again, it falls back to double check, double check, everything that's there, maybe even look back at some of the.

Vin: [00:19:57] Same post as.

Harpreet: [00:19:58] Other posts. Not everyone on [00:20:00] the call here. I've looked at lots of your material, so I don't think there's anyone here I'd have trouble trusting. But you find someone new on there, even if they've got a large follower count. If you're not familiar with the stuff that they're posting, have a look around the other stuff that they don't. I try to give a litmus test. So if all of us decided to write content in the field for which we were completely unfamiliar, what would that look like? So I don't know anything about plumbing or electrical wiring. What would that post look like? Even if I like if I watch YouTube for a date and made a post on that. What would that look like? It probably sucked really bad. And I'm sure an electrician or a plumber could probably tell you, like have no clue what you're talking about that's going to burn a house down or something if you do it that way. So maybe that's a litmus test, too. But if you're new to the field, you don't know. I mean, if you're a you know, so it's it's a constant question. I would say that that's this is also a reason why I think there's a lot of data scientists, for example, that try to reach out to all of us asking advice like, so I've read a bunch of things about the field that I'm not convinced this is the right way or I'm horribly confused. How would you recommend going about learning about this field? So it engineering is actually worse because there's not as much content. I would say that people who are putting out content are really good though. So if you had a lot of I wish.

Speaker6: [00:21:21] I wish that I would get more people reaching out to me and asking questions like that. Instead I just get people saying, hey, I'm looking for a job, here's my resumé. So, I mean, I'll take a question even.

Harpreet: [00:21:35] Are you hiring right now, Eric? Nope.

Speaker6: [00:21:38] Only for my boss.

Vin: [00:21:40] It was a nice little plug there. Almost. Ben, I want to know.

Speaker6: [00:21:43] That's cool.

Vin: [00:21:45] I want to know what you think about this, because when somebody is trying to break into the field, they don't know the difference between good content and bad content. They don't know the difference between. So to actually be able to educate them and teach them and somebody [00:22:00] who might be out over their skis a little bit. So what would you say? You're looking for signs that this is a good source, signs that it's a bad source. If you could add in a few, what would you see? What would you look for? What do you what do you think is a I don't know, maybe a red flag or a green flag probably is a good way to say it for quality content and especially for somebody that just doesn't have the context to be able to differentiate. And you have content creators who are 80% of the time. Awesome. And then there's that 20% of the time where they're out above and beyond where they really should be.

Harpreet: [00:22:37] It in. That question is for me. Oh, that's a tough question, because how do you know what bad looks like if you don't if you can't distinguish the two? I think for people on this zoom, I. Everyone knows I hate TensorFlow. And I'm sorry. I think that's coming from TensorFlow one. And I know TensorFlow two is better. So do you want to go deeper on, like, technical stuff, like content that you would like? Good advice or maybe just give me a little bit, Ben, on what what I can pull on here.

Vin: [00:23:11] So really looking.

Harpreet: [00:23:12] For.

Vin: [00:23:13] Not just technical but implementation side advice, especially because you can look at a code either works or doesn't. There's kind of a nice thing about that. The model either runs or doesn't, but when it starts getting to more content about how do you implement, how do you get something into production, how do you make more of a reliable model?

Harpreet: [00:23:36] How do you.

Vin: [00:23:38] How do you debug all of those things that aren't cut and dry answers where there.

Harpreet: [00:23:42] Are.

Vin: [00:23:43] Degrees and great differences?

Harpreet: [00:23:46] No, I think that helps. My recommendation would be trust. People have had their asses kicked. So people that are they're transparent. They're open about it. I always like people that have worked for multiple jobs and that [00:24:00] could be a red flag if they're jumping too quickly. But people that have worked for a job for a few years gone to another one, gone to another one, they're going to have different perspectives. I think if you're following someone who's been at Company A for eight years straight, then they may not have. Maybe they haven't had their ass kicked and maybe they haven't bounced around. That's why I like changing companies then, is because I, I learn what good looks like and I think I also learn what bad looks like. And I think this is maybe a little bit embarrassing, but I, I didn't, I had never heard the term technical debt until I joined the hedge fund. And then we had a consultant that came and was horrified. And I remember them sitting me down and saying, You guys are violating every single bullet on technical debt, parallel development or deadlines. Like, they kind of walked me through that. And I think, yeah. So I think to oversimplify your question, I really like people that are seasoned and that are open to their mistakes. But it's it's hard to know what good looks like because you have a lot of there's a lot of buzz around some different technologies and and behaviors that I might disagree with and. I guess in the end it's how compelling people are with their content. And I'm coming in to this conversation a little late. So I do apologize if I'm a little off topic.

Vin: [00:25:26] Oh, that's good. All right. So anybody else want to chime in on this before we head to a question about principal component analysis that was very broad. So I'm hoping we can kind of narrow it down a little bit before we dove in. Anybody else want to talk about telling the difference between good and bad content, good and bad educational?

Harpreet: [00:25:47] I'll just add one thing real quick. I mean, I broadly agree with everything everyone said and Ben as well, but I will add the caveat that it's not, you know, years of experience or [00:26:00] title or something doesn't always translate to good content. And I'm not going to pick any examples of someone with years of experience who doesn't produce good content, but rather give an example of someone who is currently an intern, data science intern, who produces great content. And that's. Q in Tron, I think she posts regularly on Python good, good tips and advice as well as data science. I think she's fantastic. And so I would not discount her her work or her contributions in any way, shape or form because she's an intern.

Vin: [00:26:41] You know, that's an interesting point. People that are learning as they go. You can actually learn quite a bit. And I was I actually said something about this last week when if you're asking how to break into data science, why would you ask someone like me that question? How would I know? I haven't done it in a decade. And so people will ask me that question. I'll say, Well, I can tell you what I look for. But no, you're right. There's there are definitely lessons that you can learn from people who just learned.

Harpreet: [00:27:07] It.

Vin: [00:27:08] Or who for the first time just figured something out. And, you know, quality sources kind of, oddly enough, is one of those things.

Harpreet: [00:27:19] To add to that real quick, I really like that comment. One of the things I learned in my career this is really funny is I was working with data scientists and they came to some conclusion and our CTO asked me to double check them and I came to a different conclusion pretty quickly. In the post summary is I was better googling than they were. And so for some of these young people that are jumping in, if they're really good at Googling, they're going to be finding, well, two things. They're learning it now, which is very relevant. And some of them could be they're already better than most of us at Googling, finding the right stuff, drilling down, asking follow up questions. [00:28:00] And so I think that I think that that's a great point that. Don't ignore the junior talent.

Vin: [00:28:10] Eric Hoppin.

Speaker6: [00:28:12] Yeah. So kind of along with the Quinn comment and also something that Jeremy Ravenel posted on LinkedIn just saying like, you know, everybody needs to create content because you need to make your work visible. And I recognize that not everybody needs to be like a quote unquote content creator. I don't consider myself a content creator. I just like post stuff, but I don't have like, you know, branding and things like that that some of your fancy folks do, which is cool. You know, I think that there's room for all of it. But the other thing is, yeah, post creator right here and that's and it's just that like learning, learning in public is, is nice because it gives me an opportunity to like share the things that I'm interested in because if other people are interested in it, like how are they going to know, you know, it's not like we're all sitting in the same room and then we can talk about it. Otherwise I would never run into like any of you. And so it's nice to be able to just like put something out there without feeling the pressure because I post it as a, as a learner slash adventure slash. You know, this is something cool that I've discovered rather than feeling the pressure to say, like, you know.

Speaker6: [00:29:22] New people to data science. Let me share something that you should know, because I'm just not that sagely, and most of the time I don't really have that much that's going to be like a tremendously wise to share. So like totally takes the pressure off to share occasionally as a post creator, not as an expert or anything like that. And it also kind of helps me, I'm trying to figure out kind of like Mark Freeman talked about, I don't know if it was here, it was in a post recently, but just talking about like once you get once you break in, then there's like that gap between, you know, the [00:30:00] really advanced people, the brand new people. And then there's like I feel like I'm like kind of somewhere in between still. I feel very like new ish in many ways, but like trying to like find that community if more people are creating and sharing, even just like learnings and stuff, I feel like we can kind of like start to coalesce and segment out different, different groups and find, find people that you can agree with and stuff like that and learn from.

Vin: [00:30:27] Definitely. Gina.

Harpreet: [00:30:30] Hi. So, yeah, I think what I'm hearing from you all pardon me in this will help me in my content creation is even if you're just putting up something that's, I don't know, like a function you developed for a particular problem. I mean, I guess how basic is to basic, not basic the programing language basic in terms of the the thing you're you're demonstrating. Like sometimes when I in my data science boot camp, I'd get a hold of some data and. In the Edda. I couldn't quite parse it out the way I wanted to. I wanted to be able to visualize it in a certain way, but it couldn't be done unless I wrote Acuff's custom function. And in the boot camp, of course, they're encouraging you to blog. And you know, it is true sometimes. Well, even if it seems basic, there's maybe somebody else who is trying to solve the same problem. So I guess. But is there ever a time when it can hurt you if you're saying maybe your skills have advanced beyond that point, but you decide to put a blog up about it? What are people's thoughts on that?

Vin: [00:31:57] All of us would agree that, you know, it's kind of like [00:32:00] what Eric said is just learning in public learning and open forums. It allows people to help you out with. Yeah, no, that's not exactly right. Or because like I said, the thing about data science is there are so many.

Harpreet: [00:32:16] Asterisks.

Vin: [00:32:17] That we have to put after everything. It's like, yeah, no, use this all the time except and then there's like 18 excepts where you use this is going to be the best thing. Well, except for and that, you know, I feel like.

Harpreet: [00:32:29] That's.

Vin: [00:32:30] That's one of our biggest problems in data science is there's no absolute. And everything changes so fast that you're wrong two months later, no matter how right you are right now. It's really hard to create fresh content and and her kind of brought in a really good a really good question how do you know if you're in an echo chamber when it comes to content? Because that's you know, and that's a big thing. If I say something in 4000 people agree with me, am I right? I mean, that does not necessarily mean I'm right. It might just mean that I've got such a clustered network. We all think the same. You know, and so that's another good aspect to this question. So, you know, as as everybody's kind of chiming in, think about that echo chamber side of it, too. How do we figure out if we're in an echo chamber? How do we figure out if somebody is just reinforcing our own bad bias or bad opinion outside of I mean, because you can't constantly be Googling the same thing over and over again to make sure that you're right and you're still right and you're still right. It's just not something that's sustainable from a learning path. So how do you find people that tell you you're an idiot? Because I have had that problem throughout my career is the people that I value the most are the ones who will stop me every once when I go, You just said something and here's why. It's stupid, but it's so hard to find those people. So how do you find someone, colleagues who will call you an idiot? And [00:34:00] also, obviously. Eric, go ahead. What you were also going to say, but more importantly, how do I find someone that will call me an idiot?

Speaker6: [00:34:08] Show them you're an idiot. There's one way to do it. So when this kind of goes between what Gino is saying and then then what you were saying as well in that one of my I like very like early posts. When I first started my Masters, I shared a screenshot of my terrible code. I had a model that had like literally dozens of interaction terms but only like a hundred rows of data, and that was it. And so like I didn't understand what was going on and I ended up with a horrid, horrid matrix and, and I posted that like I just shared it. I was like, I think I made the worst regression model of all time. And I even had some little comments in there showing that it was that it was awful. And I got so much helpful input from that. People were like, Oh, curse of dimensionality. And I'm like, I've never even heard that phrase before. Why don't you just tell me something about it? So like dropping things in from Wikipedia on there and lots of good stuff, really. Like a lot of it was like way over my head, but that's okay because it also created interesting conversation for other people to talk to talk with one another about, you know, oh well you shouldn't use reJ or you should use Lasso or whatever, you know, just like it created these things while it was over my head, it was creating this little moment of community that just happened to be around something that I had posted.

Speaker6: [00:35:32] And so if other people do that, then that's cool. And I think I think that that's it's okay. Like, like I said to like show people that I'm an idiot sometimes. But yeah, creating a creating an a space and a place where people feel like it's appropriate and they feel so inclined as to tell you like, hey, that was wrong. And like I said earlier, sometimes LinkedIn might not be where you're going to get that feedback that you want or need, and so maybe take it to StackOverflow [00:36:00] or something. But I don't think that anything, Gina, to your original thing, I don't think anything is necessarily too simple to share. If it's meaningful to you, if it's meaningful to you, then like put it out there because it's that's fine, you know, that's who you are and that's where you are right now. Awesome.

Vin: [00:36:19] Costa And then we're going to move on to something about principal component analysis for Naresh and then get back into we can probably pull back into this conversation unless we've got other questions. So if you do have questions, throw it in the chat. We've got one more about creator mode, which I can definitely speak to as interesting. So we'll talk about creator mode after this. But yeah, cast of Let's Go.

Harpreet: [00:36:44] So this is a pretty complex sociological issue, right is the and this is something that I was reading about in the last week is one thing that stops us from growing is fear. Right. And it's a mixture of fear and ego and it's a really interesting interplay there. One is we're afraid that other people are going to see us as morons. Right. And the second thing is, we're afraid that we're going to realize that we're not that good, that we don't measure up right now. That's quite a difficult thing to contend with. You have to swallow your pride significantly in order to grow in any field, because in order to see that potential for growth, you have to see the lack of fulfillment of capacity. Right. Essentially, that's what it comes down to. And how do you deal with that in an online massively multiplayer kind of space? Right. It's not fun. I mean, and part of the Internet is this weird guise of anonymity. Right? You see it less on LinkedIn because there's just more people there. But what I find is LinkedIn tends to be hyper supportive with very little, you know, very little counter-arguments. [00:38:00] Right? Whereas you go to the other side of the spectrum, you go like StackOverflow sometimes and you see some seriously aggressive responses to the point that newbies are probably not going to be keen on asking questions. Right? Like you've got these two, two weird worlds, but either people are super nice to you because they're not anonymous or it's a pain because they just don't want to really give you constructive criticism. So there are some few absolute Gold Star members on StackOverflow that really know how to, you know, respond to people.

Harpreet: [00:38:35] And part of the thing is knowing how to communicate in channels like how do you structure the StackOverflow question that's not just going to come back with please ask the question correctly and that's it, right? So there's a lot of that to be done. So one thing that I think I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but me being a musician, I was always surrounded by other musicians that were better than me. Right. So two things inevitably happened. One is I ended up asking people in person and learning from them in person, watching how they do things right, and then learning that habit of being your own worst critic. Right. And I think one of the funny factors is within the data science field, we're still in a very far and forget kind of manner, at least in your early stages, right, where you work on a little project, you take a small atomic piece of data, better code, you create a model boom, excellent medium article, GitHub, whatever, move on. Next thing, new repository, fresh article, fresh problem, fresh dataset. Right? We don't sit in that area long enough to come back to the code and say, Oh, hang on, that was crap, right? Like I found that as I spent time in a code base, a larger codebase for like six months to a year, I find that many from the past was a complete moron and me from the now is looking at me from the post code [00:40:00] six months ago going, why the hell did you do that? Right, you should be doing this, this and this so you can be your own best taskmaster.

Harpreet: [00:40:07] It's a slow way to improve, but it's it's the only constant that you can rely on. You can't always rely on other people calling you out to be an idiot. You can't rely on yourself calling yourself out to be an idiot. But part of the thing is, I think maybe this is the whole COVID situation that's got people to be more digitally interactive. But I find that just having in-person interactions is way more useful. Like, I would much rather try and get someone's time for 20 minutes, go to a meetup group, go to, you know, there's dozens of meetup groups. There's dozens of universities that just do. I was at a I was at a talk the other day at Queensland University of Technology and they were just presenting PhD papers and afterwards we were just mingling. I'll just throw a couple of zany questions at them about stuff that I'd worked on and you just get interesting responses. They kind of guide you in the right direction, right? So developing those personal connections, you can eventually go and ask, Hey, can I get 15 minutes of your time? I need to run something by you, right? That is probably more worthwhile because they're going to treat you and respond to you as a human being, which is going to be that. A nation of honesty, but not brutality. Right. We're losing that a little bit in the in the fully digital space, I think.

Vin: [00:41:31] I think Mark jumped in on this. You can get you can get trolled.

Harpreet: [00:41:36] Hard.

Vin: [00:41:37] And it's almost like it doesn't matter what platform you can get a Web assault with a deadly comment in seconds and some of them are fairly benign. You know, where it's like, okay, good burn. All right. Yeah, you got me. That was a dumb thing that I did. But every once in a while, it's like, Whoa.

Harpreet: [00:41:56] Come on, man.

Vin: [00:41:57] Put the blowtorch down. Stop that. But [00:42:00] I don't know how you you know, it's not like you can delete everyone's account because we've.

Harpreet: [00:42:06] All.

Vin: [00:42:07] At one point or another, turned the blowtorch on it just like it was that day, or it was that comment. And we lit it up. We felt like we were channeling our inner Elon Musk, and we were it was like, No, I'm firing this up today. But that's and I think that's just kind of a human thing. But some.

Harpreet: [00:42:25] People wow.

Vin: [00:42:28] Just way too far and it's on every platform. I wish there was a you know, if there was a way to fix this problem, I think we'd be billionaires. We could stop stop people from being mean to other people, especially in technology. And yeah, you know, and then you just kind of nailed it in the comments. Like, you can get jumped for something that you did. It wasn't that bad. I didn't say anything. What do you mean? Yeah, no, I think we've all been there too, where you say something and just like I said something about entrepreneurship and someone else commented that I said everyone should become an entrepreneur. What? No, I didn't. What are you talking about?

Harpreet: [00:43:11] What?

Vin: [00:43:13] And so, yeah, I think there's something to that where we need to make it safer for people early in their career. But also, like I want to answer your questions on Stack Overflow. I just I won't I don't like the abuse, so I'm not going to do it and I'll do it on other platforms. But Stack is evil, just absolutely evil. All right, Mark, jump in on credible sources getting jumped online in the comments. You know, we've got a range of topics here.

Harpreet: [00:43:43] Yeah. Yeah, well, I love jumping into this. So, first of all, I like to say I love my haters because it tells me that I've created content that's reached outside my normal group, my normal kind of like bubble that always agrees with me. And so typically I only get people to really dissent like that [00:44:00] hard on my content is when I reach a wider audience. So for me, I'm like, Yes, I found someone who doesn't like me great. You know, now there's people who can take it to extreme and that's not not so much fun. And so I think one key thing is maybe not everyone gets as level, but we're into content creation. A key component is building your community and driving the values of your community. So a lot of times in my content and my comments where it is, I'm saying like, hey, there's a space to learn. You know, if you're going to be coming here, be respectful. I'm going to call you out and block you. And so other people uphold those values. If they follow you long enough and they'll start policing for you that you have the same thing. And so I've seen that like on Craig's Post sometimes, or even my post where people are like unruly, mean for no reason. And I'm like, Yo, dude, I'm just trying to learn. Like, of course I'm not an expert. Like, you could easily just share your expertize and be a hero, but now you're just being kind of an ass. Now, on the flip side, you know, I've I've been on the other side. I haven't built that community yet. So recently I went on Twitter because I'm trying to build up my Web three, Web three presence on there. And within the first week, like an engineering legend decided to retweet me and just roast me as like a trial by fire.

Harpreet: [00:45:22] And it's had a whole.

Harpreet: [00:45:24] Gang of people tell me how dumb I am and how I'm some shill for Web three. And I'm like, I don't even know y'all. Like, I just came on Twitter and I'm from LinkedIn. Everyone's nice here. What's happening? And the thing is, I didn't have my community defend me. I only have 200 followers there now. I'm all by myself in the alleyway. So I think the key thing is like one stick through it. Everyone forgot that instance already. Like all those people saw my idiot, they probably still think I'm an idiot, but now I just never see them. And if you just keep on building, you'll create a community that's really going to ride for you. And you know, [00:46:00] those are people you want to build for and you can still those values that can help you out.

Vin: [00:46:05] That's totally true. It's almost like you need you need a security detail before you start saying things on Twitter or on Reddit or Stack Overflow.

Harpreet: [00:46:17] Or.

Vin: [00:46:18] Because pretty much everywhere, online, everywhere on social media that you could you do you need some defenders. And I think, you know, and I've had this happen before where people say, hey, I'm getting jumped. Could you like. You mind jumping in here? You know, and don't be afraid to do that online to reach out to people, because I've had to do it myself where I can't moderate everything. And I've got a comment in one of my posts where I don't know if that's offensive, you know, because not much offends me. I'm getting old, so it's hard to offend me in the way that makes sense to other people as offensive. So and I think that's one of the problems is just age differences, perspective differences, cultural differences. Sometimes I don't know what's offensive and you know, it's good to not only have that for defense of yourself, but also for somebody to tell you, hey, that comment, you need to get in there and you need to say something about that person because sometimes I don't even see a troll.

Harpreet: [00:47:25] So quick quick note on that rule fast. That's why I think setting your values is so important, because then you can have that kind of clear litmus test of like, did this cross my values for the community I'm building? And so for me, mine is vulnerability and openness to make mistakes to learn. And so if someone's going to rag on someone making a mistake that crosses that value and I call them out. And that goes back to my community to tell them, like, Oh, Mark's going to call that out. So it's okay for me to still be vulnerable when I'm still trying to learn the space. As for other stuff, you know, where I'm I can't I can't think of the top of my head, you [00:48:00] know, where I'm kind of indifferent on, you know, I'll stay silent as long as they're not, like, overly like crazy racist or sexist or something like that. Right. I obviously got to call that out. But, you know, I'll let people be and express how they want. But I think it's just very if you're a content creator, really think about the values that you want for your community and really stick to them and exhibit that to your community.

Vin: [00:48:22] Greg.

Speaker7: [00:48:24] I think I think somebody said something here that I think what you were describing then. That was me the other day. So I posted this shared this book the other day that had something in there that triggered a troll. And the guy called me a racist. Like, literally, Greg is a racist. And I was like, should I feel offended or should I be mad? What? What is this guy talking about? I was also confused and I was like, Should I blog that guy right away and delete his posts? I need some help. So Vin was one of those I pulled like and say, Hey, take a look at this one for me. Yeah, reverse racism.

Harpreet: [00:49:01] So and I pulled in.

Speaker7: [00:49:04] Vin just ran with that guy. Like, I don't know if you guys remember. It is cloud engineering book that I was sharing, that Red Hat was promoting and things like that. And then there was just just one page that's like usually left blank and very little in the middle of the page. I sort of got I skipped it. I never saw it, but that guy saw it very little in that blank page where typically books have this break intentionally leaving a page blank, it says Black Lives Matter. And then the guy caught it and it triggered that dude into the next level. Tro I've never seen before. And the next thing you know, Greg is a racist without even knowing. They even taking time to realize, like, I don't know. I don't know how he got there. I didn't see it in the first place. So if you go back to that post, you will see like a conversation between myself, him and Tom about like [00:50:00] us trying to convince him that he's just like short sighted and small minded. And at the end of the day, when you encounter people like that, it's either you agree to not fight too much, convincing them that their way of thinking is small, or you just use it as a learning. But at the end of the day, too, you're hoping that your point of view comes across somehow, and over time that person changes. But it's it's amazing to see those shows. I haven't been across these in a while. And in terms of content creation, I know you guys have said a lot about this one. I mean, to me, you know, what I consider good is those with intention of learning, right? So leaving space to learn and the bad ones are the ones who don't leave space to learn and consider their statement as the one and only and or don't make an effort to provide something that that really helps people grow things like I don't know, I have I have trigger.

Harpreet: [00:51:04] Posts.

Speaker7: [00:51:05] That I read from people that I expect more from. Like things like if you don't do this, then you're an idiot. Type posts really trigger me. Like, tell me something that's insightful. Don't just state something and don't put a you're not putting an effort into it to make me think, make me, you know, really reflect on it and learn something new. But it's definitely a special place out there. Linkedin is definitely more gentle with people, which also makes me question that just because I'm getting love on my post doesn't mean I'm saying the things that are right. I need to see somebody disagreeing with me from time to time, and this makes me this keeps me grounded and open to learning something new and learning that I messed up because I will mess up sometimes. So and hopefully, mark, the way you had it on Twitter, [00:52:00] I don't know if I have the guts for it, but I'm pretty sure it's coming because I've been trying to be a little bit more aggressive on Twitter, too, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. So it's one of those that I signed on for it back in 2012 or something, and I never was active until like recently, never wanted to post anything.

Harpreet: [00:52:21] So it's like I walked into a meetup and actually ended up into a bar fight. That's. That's Twitter for me.

Speaker7: [00:52:27] Yeah, exactly.

Vin: [00:52:29] All right, Gina, stand up. Gina, did you want to.

Harpreet: [00:52:32] Jump in on.

Harpreet: [00:52:33] Well, yeah, thanks. I mean, I haven't yet started putting out content the way others here have. I'm going to be doing more of it. And of course, these comments about I mean, I suppose the trolls are always going to come. I've been in some discussions just over various platforms where, you know, people express some idea and I try to give a counterpoint and sometimes people respond back. I mean, for one, I always try to be respectful. I tried my very best to be respectful. You know, I might be thinking something a little different, but I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes sometimes people come back and say, yeah, you know, that's actually a really good point. Other times people have come back like basically attacking me or kind of twisting the words around. And then at that point, I'm like, Look, I took my time. I took time to respond to you in a thoughtful way. And this is what you're coming back at me with. You're attacking me. You're twisting my words. Well, so thing is, I don't have time for that. If you're not going to discuss something in good faith, if you don't actually have a good idea, if you don't actually have a well reasoned argument, then I'm not going to waste my time. So goodbye. And I definitely hold to that.

Harpreet: [00:53:57] I will not respond. Mike [00:54:00] drop. That's it. So that's one thing I found kind of effective. And then another thing that can be effective is if people are kind of going on and on about a topic, if there's some. Peace that you can hold on to. And there's an example I'm thinking of. It's just too convoluted I won't go into. But if there's some simple peace where it's like, nobody can disagree on this, then you can keep coming back and saying, yes, but this, I don't know, freedom of speech. People think they have freedom of speech anywhere and everywhere. Like, no, you don't. If you look at the Constitution, if you look at the history, it actually only applies on like public streets. Or if you're in a private parking lot and the owners of that shopping center don't want you there, you don't have a right to be there and do whatever you want. And if you kind of can keep sometimes things focused in that way, I think that can help because then what can they say? They can't really argue with it, although I've had people say, Wait, that's a private parking lot. It's like, Yeah, a constant freedom of speech. First Amendment doesn't apply there. Come on. So those are my two thoughts that I have.

Vin: [00:55:27] I got to throw some some of these comments that are coming in. We got a recommendation on sandworm as a book by anti. We got Jeremy came in with we need to advocate for kindness. I just think in one line that's about the best way that you can say it. Obviously not everybody listens to the advocacy, but I think advocating for kindness, it's a great, absolutely great comment. And I think. I think some of us have gotten this in different levels. And Ben, I don't know if I know you've [00:56:00] seen like the level ten trolling before. You've had some people come at you very publicly before in the past. I don't know if you're comfortable talking about it, but I mean, how do you.

Harpreet: [00:56:08] Handle.

Vin: [00:56:09] Like, you know, I've had somebody from IBM take a pretty good run at me at conference before, but that's I'd say that's an eight and that's tough to handle but mean how do you handle it when it's in public and you have no there's no way to run at that point.

Harpreet: [00:56:28] So we some of the most public trolling I've had is when I was at Higher View, we had some people tweeting at Hirevue, tagging us, saying that we're all racist. And it was this guy from I still hate this guy. He's a professor at Purdue. He's the Twitter guy, random, random, underscore Walker. So he was tweeting white papers at me and my data science team saying, you guys are racist. You guys need to read this. We read the white papers. He's tweeting us and they were so outdated. Like like like it'd be one thing for him to send us a white paper and for us to be like, damn, like, we haven't thought of that, but it we were so much more advanced. And I think you do want to listen to criticism. The thing I learned in the Hirevue days is if you jump into these emotional fights, it doesn't matter what you say, there's no rational argument to win. So for some people that dove into this Twitter threads, they already hate you. They don't know anything about you. They've already decided that they hate you and you are an idiot. And you could have the most elegant, rational argument you could imagine. They've already made up their mind. And I think when people are emotional, it's so I learned to just avoid those. So rather than even engaging, which is unfortunate because you would love to have rational dialog online, it's not going to happen in a Twitter thread. I wish it did, but that's what I learned. I think there was a comment in [00:58:00] the side. I did have someone calling me every post I did for like six months. He would respond and call me an idiot and it didn't matter, like what the Post was about. And I thought, I think we think especially Ben and others, like we've been here for a while, we should have an esteem.

Harpreet: [00:58:16] That is that can.

Harpreet: [00:58:20] Be rock solid. But I kind of felt like I've got thick skin. I worked at a hedge fund, I ran a data science team, I have patents and shit and I, I should be able to have confidence. But I noticed it was wearing on me when I finally blocked the person I, I had that sigh of relief. And so I think that's something that everyone should be asking is your life is too short to have anyone pull you down emotionally. And if it happens a few times, I guess that's the balance. The last thing I'll say is there is a balance. You do want criticism. So if someone comments and says something critical of your post, you don't want to just hurry and block them, ignore it. You do want to take in that criticism. But if you notice that this person's always negative and a lot of these people are they look at all their posts, all of their posts are negative. You're both better off to block them and they will no longer see you.

Vin: [00:59:11] I think that's a great point where you said blocking people is sometimes the best thing that you can do.

Harpreet: [00:59:18] For them to like the you obviously said something that frustrated them, that they hate it. And when you block them, you no longer exist to each other, which.

Harpreet: [00:59:28] Is a beautiful thing.

Vin: [00:59:31] Yeah. And I think, you know, you're right. There's that line. Obviously, you want critics. And like I said earlier, I wants people to call me an idiot. But at the same time, at some point, it stops being constructive.

Harpreet: [00:59:42] Yeah. And it's one of the things, too, that's a good reminder for me. I have hopefully I haven't said vicious things, but I have been tempted to cut people off at the knees before. And I'm so grateful that I've hesitated because there especially like you see people [01:00:00] with like an open network tag and grateful. I've never done this because I've had some assholes say something. So it's so tempting to say like who's got the open to work tag on asshole? And so I guess the recommendation for everyone here is when you feel like you're about to keyboard warrior in destroy someone don't. I and if you relate to that, then you're like, Oh, I know the exact thing to say to just cut this person in half. And I'm so grateful I did.

Vin: [01:00:29] I think that's that's something that I got lucky when I was starting to get a following and a reputation that I had. Some people explain to me, like, you can't say the things now that you used to be able to say because it used to be like you and the person you were talking to were on the same. But now you can be talking to somebody who is just starting out, just trying to build out their reputation and they're taking something personally, because we all do at some point. We all take some criticism personally at some point. And if I say something, I might have like an armada of people all of a sudden jump that person for and I don't want them to do that. So I think especially since a lot of us are creators and starting to get large, large followings. Just be really careful of what you say, because just like Ben said, you can. You can hurt someone to the point where they're crying over a post and it's just kind of messed up.

Harpreet: [01:01:33] So I will intentionally hurt some types of people and LinkedIn. I've had a lot of fun doing this and it's around sexual harassment. So I've done this twice where some some poor woman on LinkedIn will send me a clip of what some asshole said to her in a private message. These are awful things, and I've done this twice that. I love doing this. I will post it and I will tag that person in one time they deleted [01:02:00] their LinkedIn. These are awful things. I do not feel bad. I will lose no sleep over this. But so there are some times that I am brutal and I never get tired of this. So if anyone ever hears a sexual harassment, send me. Send it my way, I will tag them. And it is hilarious to see the comments that come.

Vin: [01:02:21] And I think that's something that I've brought up with people who are really hesitant to bring up. The fact that they were.

Harpreet: [01:02:27] Harassed.

Vin: [01:02:28] In any way, shape or form is that you don't necessarily have to tell people to publicly acknowledge it. But I've had colleagues in the past reach out to me and say, hey, this person that you're connected with, that you've been that you've been interacting with, here's what they've done at conference or here's what they've done in my comments. I don't want you to use my name. I don't want.

Harpreet: [01:02:52] You.

Vin: [01:02:52] To even mention me and this person. I don't want you to go after this person. But what we end up being able to do is when someone comes to me for advice and says, Hey, I'm thinking about doing an internship here, I can say.

Harpreet: [01:03:05] Well.

Vin: [01:03:06] You know, there are some other considerations that you might want to know and I can say it without saying it, and so that someone can read between the lines. And a lot of us can steer people away from having a career working as a research assistant under somebody who's just terrible, you know, a toxic person.

Harpreet: [01:03:26] Or.

Vin: [01:03:28] So you can steer people sideways. And that's just something that I also want to bring out is if you don't want to go public, don't feel like you have to, because that's a scary experience. But if you tell people you trust and just tell us, don't say anything, we won't. But we can save other people from going through the same experience without ever calling you out. We're having it be made public. So that's another way that people can help in that position because to go ahead.

Harpreet: [01:03:58] I've actually been I mean, [01:04:00] I've seen situations where that's come into play so elegantly where, you know, just having the right conversations with the right people at the right time pushes you away from what could be a cliff that you never saw coming. Right. So having those open, private conversations and this kind of brings me back to what I was saying before. Right. Why are we trying to deal with everything in the public light? You know, having those personal conversations often are far more productive and useful than having a big, big post on LinkedIn and on Twitter and Reddit and stuff. That's super public, right? Because you're either going to swing one way or the other with that stuff. So that's part of it. But the other thing that I just wanted to kind of latch onto is you said back in the day, people are always kind of at the same level, but now you could kind of be dealing with people at any kind of level. Right. That's sort of spot on. Right. So I used to do a lot of I used to do a lot of sports kind of posts on my Facebook or my personal Facebook. Right. And this was at a time when most of the people in my Facebook were just high school friends and stuff like that. I was absolutely obsessed with cricket. Sue me.

Harpreet: [01:05:15] I'm Indian, right? Like, and I'm Australian at the time, so come on. Right. So I had this weird, weird nexus of Indian fans and Australian fans on my Facebook and it was like Battle Royale from time to time on my posts, right? Like you'd see the most crazy, crazy discussions and it got quite personal very fast. Right? And then it's a very charged situation. You know, India, Australia is not like for people who don't know the cricketing world, India, Australia is right up there, like in terms of sporting rivalries, right? So this is like Lewis Hamilton versus, you know, Max Verstappen kind of stuff. But people know Formula One a bit more. But [01:06:00] essentially, like what I realized is I started interacting more near the end of high school in the university. When I started looking at LinkedIn a little bit more, is that that wider spread of who you're dealing with kind of made me naturally aware of, hang on, there are different ways to interact. You kind of move out of that schoolboy kind of sense, right? And I was at a time when Facebook was still very much within your generation. Now, Facebook is also quite wide in terms of who most people have in their networks, right? Generally, generationally speaking. So there's that whole gap between you get to a point where you kind of realize, okay, you know what, I'm not really interested in those conversations anymore.

Harpreet: [01:06:39] So I found myself, you know, tapering off the whole Facebook cricket posts thing. I did a bit of freelance journalism or actually write a couple of articles on on the sport as opposed to, you know, an open field like Facebook post. And you still see it, you see it on Instagram threads, you see it on Facebook. It's just people just get so worked up on it. And I'm just at a point with the sport where I'm like, You know what? I love the sport. I'm just not interested in engaging with people's opinions on who's the best batsman or bowler. It's doesn't matter to me, right? It just doesn't matter to me. So there's this total difference between topics like that versus technical topics like, okay, hey, I'm doing this in a particular way for this kind of interaction and then getting flamed over it. Oh, why? Why would you do that? You're a moron for using. You know this. I don't know. Name a technique, right? You're a moron for using a cutting edge detector instead of, I don't know, a half transform. Great. Excellent. You don't see, it's very obvious when that happens in a technical space that it's like this is kind of pointless. And I kind of agree. Like, if there's no actual substance, like what I was saying, there's no substance to a comment.

Harpreet: [01:07:54] If they're not actually trying to add value to it, walk away, just be happy to walk away. And then [01:08:00] one thing that I struggled with and I still struggle with is having the last word in that conversation. It's so tempting to just be the comment that ends it right. And having grown up in that Facebook generation of high school Facebook. Right, it's like that's just almost what we were trained socially to do is to gather likes to your comment being the last one to close the post doesn't make sense right if there's like I try to sometimes if I get into those more heated discussions, especially on LinkedIn and often it's about philosophy or something like that, I try to eke out what someone's trying to say, even if they're a bit pissed off of what I've said. What are you trying to say? What's your fundamental belief? If I can bring that out, we can potentially I can withstand a bit of a beating in order to get a productive conversation from people who are thinking totally differently. That's worthwhile to me. But if after a couple of, you know, after a couple of comments, it's clear that they don't really want to engage in that discussion and they just kind of want to attack, just walk away. It's not worth it.

Vin: [01:09:08] Yeah, I got to. Greg, I got to ask you this, because your I mean, my following was like, I built it over forever because, well, I'm old and because when I started out, social media wasn't like this thing where there were technical influencers that wasn't a thing. In 2014, 2015. And it sort of became a thing. But you got into it a lot later and you're following. Exploded. You I mean, you grew faster than I think I've seen anybody else do it. You just I mean, it was like your content was great. Your. Your personality was there to. You know, it was kind of it was kind of impressive, to be honest. So, I mean, what did you notice like the crossover from being [01:10:00] starting out in social media to bang your you're now a bigger name.

Speaker7: [01:10:09] Um. So there are a couple of things. You know, I'll be frank, Rachel, before. When I first started tinkering with it, I it was like late 2019, late 2019. I realized, okay, a lot of people are talking about data has become a big conversation and Tableau became a thing. Power. Bi ET cetera. Ml At this point, I've already started hearing about how ML was integrated with Power BI And you could build dashboards so fast. Build data pipelines so fast and generate insights. And then there's this Python thing I'm starting. I started hearing. So I started taking some classes and then sharing some posts about. I reached a milestone. I did this little project in Python, blah, blah, blah, very basic stuff with very little engagement. So in my mind I just said, okay, it doesn't matter. I'm committed to posting very often or consistently. But then when I knew I was onboarding the joining the company I'm working for now. I knew it was going to be a psychological effect to it. So I knew that I had a responsibility. Now that if I say things psychologically, people will associate that with, Oh, this is the good stuff coming. So which means it was something that I put pressure that did put pressure on me to be cautious about what I talk about, but also be open to making mistakes, of course. But I think that the psychology of it really helped because I went from joining [01:12:00] the company I worked for that I'm not naming in February to 2020 to buy by November.

Speaker7: [01:12:08] I grew from 20 to 25. And then once I got the nomination, like the top voice, I added another 50 to 100 after the following year, which is in 2021. So with all of that, I think the psychological effect happened really in 2021. It wasn't anything that I've done and I'm speaking from my experience from because I can't understand it either. But I can tell you the key thing that helped me was consistency. The psychological effect of, oh, somebody from this company is talking, I better listen. Those things helped. And then also the subject that I chose to talk about, where the IT subjects at the time. So 20, 19, 2020, you know, it was a lot of this discussion and also an increase in activity in online 2020. Everybody stayed home, what are we doing with COVID, etc., etc.. So I think there are a lot of things that triggered it because in 2021 the growth continued to happen. At the end of 2021, I started seeing it kind of like slowed down a little bit, right? Because there's an adjustment that happens either with the system, either with the way, you know, other people also come in. And the conversation about AI is different. Now we're trying to look post the AI. You know, at the end of the day, next year, it may not be sexy anymore. I mean, there are some. There are some. There are different factors that came together during that time that really helped me, but I don't know how to reproduce that. So.

Vin: [01:13:48] I. I think it's interesting how the different generations kind of interacted with social media and how social media interacted with us. I'm going to we've got about 15 more minutes. [01:14:00] I know we're 15 over here. So I'm going to kind of put a hard line in about 15 minutes. But we've got two questions that are kind of open along the same lines. And Naresh, I apologize if you got it. If you can make your question about PCA a little bit more specific, we can we can try to jump into it. So if you could throw that in the comments, that'll be awesome. But number one, creator mode, like how what is creator mode? Is creative mode done anything for you? Do you like it, hate it, whatever. But the other side of it also is how do you balance your time? How do you have a job, a life and constantly be creating stuff on social media? And I can say for myself, like a time box, everything. I've gotten really good at spending 5 minutes on social media in between like claimed back 5 minutes of my life. If I'm in between meetings, you'll see me on social media. Like at the end of an hour. At the half hour, because I have 5 minutes that I clawed back from a meeting or something like.

Harpreet: [01:15:02] That.

Vin: [01:15:03] And I'll be able to jump on and do some responses all time. Box How much time I have to write content and posts? I'll try to do a lot of that on the weekends. You know, a time like this is just. I'll be honest, it's fun. I like decompressing on a Friday, and this is just an awesome way to do it. So this is almost like therapy, I'll be completely honest. And as far as creator mode goes, I have no idea. I don't get it. I know it does something. I just don't know what that's something really is. And it's not LinkedIn's fault. I mean, somebody reached out to me way back when it was a product manager at.

Harpreet: [01:15:39] Linkedin.

Vin: [01:15:39] And she tried to work me through it and helped me understand. And I just I mean, I didn't get it. So it's not it's not creator mode's fault. It's just maybe I'm old, maybe I, you know, maybe it's not my audience, maybe it's just not aligned with me or something like that. So I'm not dumping [01:16:00] on it. I'm just saying I don't get it and it doesn't seem to do anything for me, but I want to hear like Ben Mark Great. Greg Eric definitely want to hear this from you too. How do you balance and let's start with Greg, but how do you balance? You know, because.

Harpreet: [01:16:16] You create a lot of content.

Speaker7: [01:16:19] Yeah, I get that sleep too. So for me, you know, it's I've made peace with the fact that we all have 24 hours. So the only element that I have is work with intent or go through your day with intent. Because 24 hours is available to all of us, we cannot change that. Right. That's the only thing that we cannot change. Only thing that we can change is what we do about our time. I'm not the perfect one. I'm not the perfect one who goes through a 24 hour day and say, Man, I use that so effectively. I'm still having some rooms to improve for sure. But for me, typically it's the trigger of commitment and this is more of a mental model or a mental adjustment than anything else. It's kind of like committing to losing weight or looking buff by summer kind of thing. Once I do this mental check that this is the route I want to go, I keep pushing it. I make time for it as I go. So for example, for posting on LinkedIn, I know there are certain times where I get more views, so I kind of make time around my schedule, my work schedule to put something out. So the day prior, I may have the content already prepared and then maybe at night and then the day of posting I just copy paste and it reduces it to something like a short 15 minute break that I was taking at work, [01:18:00] which is acceptable because it's out of a work day.

Speaker7: [01:18:02] I'm pretty sure employers are not expecting people to be fully vested for like the whole 8 hours. Right? You take short breaks and inside of that day and I do take a lot of short breaks to deal with some disconnection and making sure I get things done then, you know, for for the other ones, like making sure I have time for my family and things like that. Again, it's about working with intention, right? My intention is to make sure I am present in my kid's life so I make time for it. So I know around 8:00 pm this is where it is starting to go back. Go to bed. I take no meeting, do not call me. I am with them spending that time, etc. etc.. All right. So it's that mental commitment that really helps me go through just about anything, knowing that 24 hours is available to us all. And when I observe other people who do ten times more than I do, I'm amazed at that. And then I ask myself, how do they do it knowing that they have 24 hours just like me? And the only element that's missing for me is the commitment. Peace. Commitment comes with learning how to manage your time and working with intent and then moving forward.

Harpreet: [01:19:13] Okay.

Vin: [01:19:15] Ben, let's go to you next and then Mark right after you. And then Eric. Eric, you get the last word.

Harpreet: [01:19:22] I like what Kate struck me. Told me that she never she doesn't gamify anything. She will post it one of the 1 a.m. on Saturday or Sunday at six and she'll even cannibalize her own posts. So she she has an idea even though she posted 5 minutes ago, it's going to come out. So I've try to take that attitude even just being on this, all of us could post it three times because we've learned something. We've heard something that's changed our perspective. So I only do text only posts. Now they're just with my phone and they're normally in the moment during a meeting, I'm thinking something. I have an epiphany. I'll just post it and send it out there. I used to write long form blogs and that was too much work for [01:20:00] not enough impact. So that's how I think about it now. I just. Just streaming thoughts. Just text only in there very quick, though, for for me, I'm with Greg. I have to time block things. So, you know, when I'm I'm doing really well I will typically wake up at five and then work on side hustle from 5 to 9 and then not 9 to 5, work on my day job and then from five to whenever, just hang out with my family. That's when things are going great. I might have like a good week or a good month and that schedule I do really well with.

Harpreet: [01:20:37] I'm bed by ten. Do all that right. When I'm not doing well, I start shifting. The schedule shifts, the side hustle happens after work and I stay up later and then everything kind of falls out the reset. And so for me, it's like going slow to help you move fast. And for me, I've realized sleeping is so key for me being successful. So that's why I got ordering now to track my sleep because I'm like, This is the most important thing. It's like the foundation for all my habits, because if I can go to bed by ten and wake up by five, and that's why I feel really great, you know, I can just crush it for for the rest of the day and feel really charged and make the most out of my my hours. And so it really comes down to prioritization for these things. So first and foremost, you know, prioritize my family. And so I have set times where I don't have kids. So me, my wife and my dog, I have set time for my wife. Nothing crosses that. I will cancel things. I will move things around. That's the time I spend my life. And so from there, you know, the other priority is like my day job.

Harpreet: [01:21:47] My day job is what pays the bills. And they are comfortable with me working my side hustle because I execute and perform well. And so if I can get that under control then and I'm performing well, my job, then [01:22:00] all the other extra hours, I don't feel pressure anymore. I'm just building, having fun. And so for me, you know, I was telling you my ideal stage wake in about five reality is you know on my OC days maybe not best days I'm I'm starting to get around like seven 730 and seven 7 to 9 is when I feel like, all right, I'm going to get my best ideas out. So I like to post on LinkedIn by 9 a.m. ist because it's before work for a lot of people on the West Coast, ends on lunch break for a lot of people on the East Coast. So I don't know if that works, but the mental logic makes sense to me. And so I always like to have like a solid post. And for me the posting is more so a reflection about my career at the moment and what I'm currently learning and what I'm trying to achieve. And so essentially, you know, by me reflecting every single, it's like a diary, almost me reflecting every single day.

Harpreet: [01:22:56] It makes me extraordinarily better at explaining my thoughts at my job or to potential customers or clients for my side hustle. And also I workshop a lot of thoughts online. So if I'm working on a new idea, I'll post it, see what the feedback is and see what resonate it, and then go back to my job and all of a sudden crush it because I workshopped it with like 1000 people. So that's how I kind of do my content. And now I'm moving more towards like paid content and, and paid engagements, whether it's blogs or post themselves. That's a lot of motivation to do great posts because you're getting paid to do it. But more importantly, it's because now you're getting paid. You want to deliver on those results. And so now you're really pushing to actually write really solid content to to do that. And so it's not just like, Hey, I'm going to post them on my mind. I'm actually going to really think through what's the copy I'm creating for that. So that's how I kind of block my time. But here's the thing this sounds like I got it figured out, but this crazy schedule and honestly, like, if I don't have my sleep down, it's all a mess and I don't do it at all. [01:24:00]

Vin: [01:24:01] Eric. You got it. You're going to take the last word and then we're going to sign off and I'm going to figure out how to stop streaming. You know, I'm going to be learning something here.

Harpreet: [01:24:10] In.

Vin: [01:24:10] A few seconds.

Speaker6: [01:24:11] Good luck with that from a content standpoint. So I yeah, I don't schedule anything. My posts are like when they post, I literally just click the post button and and I don't have anything wrong or any problems with scheduling stuff. I've definitely considered it, but I also usually don't know what I'm going to post to posts away from what I'm posting. And so I. I have started trying to do more with the time boxing, try to do it like right at the end of my workday because otherwise, like, you know, it's like we've we've heard of people not having to commute because they're working remotely. Like your workday tends to get a little bit longer. My workday tends to get a little bit longer because I like my work. And so like I'll continue working, but instead I'm trying to time boxed out at the end of the day with something that I really enjoy. The other piece of it is I really value interaction, and so I'm trying to make sure that I'm like commenting and a lot of times I'll comment before I even get around to posting and sometimes I just won't feel like posting or like I have something really, you know, that I want to add to the world through a post, but I still want to comment and be a part of the community, build somebody else up or whatever, you know. So I think that that's I definitely have a little bit more I don't know what is that like laissez faire or just scattered content creation strategy or lack thereof? But I will definitely echo Mark's sentiment about sleep. There is a noticeable difference when I'm firing on all cylinders versus when I'm just dragging on the floor. So I definitely want to do that and do a good job with it. Keep up, [01:26:00] you know, keep up and keep on the schedule because it's healthy. But it's also like reality is if I'm if I'm there like half days of the week, 75% of the days of the week, it's a good week. Otherwise, it's a more realistic week.

Harpreet: [01:26:13] All right.

Vin: [01:26:15] And I want to thank everybody, everybody for participating in this, because it's been a great conversation. We've got 2 minutes. So if anybody's got a last thought on this and wants to jump in, please. By all means. You know, last words before we sign off, you're going to have to be like you're on the news where you got 30 seconds. Last minute comment.

Speaker7: [01:26:36] Masterful horseman. Great job.

Vin: [01:26:38] Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. All I do is copy harpreet. You know, just pretend. Channel my inner in there.

Speaker7: [01:26:46] Harpreet.

Vin: [01:26:47] Yep.

Harpreet: [01:26:48] All right.

Vin: [01:26:49] Looks like that's all we got. Thank you, everybody. I really appreciate you coming. I've got nothing cool. Like Harpreet has got something cool to say at the end of the day. But I think that comment practice kindness, promote kindness. I think that's a wonderful way to end. So, everybody, thank you for coming. Have a great weekend. And remember, next week, Harpreet got his second year anniversary coming up for the artist of Data Science. Definitely show up, support him and support him in his new job at Pachyderm. He's got a new role. He didn't get to pitch that one too hard, but let's do that for him. Thank you, everybody.