Build a Career in Data Science

This very surprise bonus episode was made after Emily and Jacqueline found themselves simultaneously unemployed. Here Emily will chat about being part of a 15% company-wide labor reduction while Jacqueline walks through the steps she's been doing as she interviews with new companies. Join them for some vulnerable conversation that are relevant to this current wave of layoffs.

In the final episode of Season 1, Emily and Jacqueline take a moment to reflect on all they've learned in writing a book and making a podcast about data science careers.

"You can't fire me I quit!" --a great example of not leaving a job gracefully (but hey it happens!). In this week's episode Emily and Jacqueline discuss how to decide when the right moment is for you to leave a job, and what steps you should take. They also talk about the realities of the situation, like managers who don't seem to listen when you discuss why you are unhappy, walking out of job, and getting a last minute counter offer.

You're not a failure! The field of data science is overflowing with projects that just didn't work out. This episode we talk about these projects and why they fail. We also discuss how to handle them emotionally even though it might feel like you're solely responsible. In the game, Emily makes Jacqueline try and discern true stories of data science mistakes from her twisted deceptions.

Putting data science into production can mean a ton of things: from customer-facing models run millions of times a day to continuously live dashboards for stakeholders. But writing code for production and getting it to work can be intimidating for many data scientists, and lots of us have never tried. In this episode we talk about production, why it can be scary, and what you can do to get started! We also have a game that just might rip off a much more popular TV show.

Welcome to your new data science role! You just started a new data science job, maybe your first one, and wow there is a lot to do! In this episode, we cover what to expect in the first few months of the job and what to do if it’s not what you hoped. We also discuss how to handle the inevitable heartbreak as you find technical skeletons in the closet like production databases that are just csv files on a SharePoint.

The interview: possibly the most nerve-wracking part of a data science job search. In this episode, we’ll help you prepare by covering the full interview process, including the different types of interviews, what questions you might be asked, and what the interviewers are looking for. And since interviewing is a two-way street, we also do a mock interview where Emily as the interviewee tries to see if there are red flags in a few jobs.

Before you can get a data science job, you need to find one! In this episode, we discuss how to decode job descriptions, use your network, and find jobs that don’t need 3+ years of experience. We share how we’ve found our previous jobs and we do some on-the-spot judging of job posts that Emily found on LinkedIn.

It seems there are so many “required” skills for a data science job—how can someone possibly learn them? In this episode, we discuss four possible ways to do so: a formal degree program, a boot camp, learning on the job, and teaching yourself. We also share our own very different backgrounds: Jacqueline's math master's and engineering PhD versus Emily's statistics minor, master's in organizational behavior, and a boot camp.

What actually *is* data science, and what does a data scientist do? What kind of backgrounds do data scientists come from and what skills do you need to be one? In this episode we start with the basics—declaring once and for all what is data science anyway and exploring how the hype of the field matches reality. We explore the three main areas of data science - analytics, decision science, and machine learning - and help you figure out which is best for YOU.