Brandon Sucher - Beyond the Classroom: Unspoken Realities of a Data Science Career

Thanks, Daniel. Thank you for that introduction. Good morning, everyone. Happy to be here at PositConf and excited to talk to you a little bit about some of the unspoken realities of a data science career. So to start, since we're all data people, I figured why not look at the data. So today I've pulled together some highly researched data on what makes a person have a successful and satisfied career. So this is my own personal experience.

For me, I'm more of an introvert. I don't like asking questions if I don't have to. And I just much prefer figuring things out on my own. So for example, I love escape rooms, where you have to solve different puzzles to be able to escape. And I'm the person that will look through every nook and cranny in the room to try to figure out what's going on before I asked for a hint. So for me, flying solo just comes naturally. But I've learned I've been in industry just for over a year, so I'm still new to my career. But I've had great mentors, and I've been able to talk to lots of people and learn better ways of navigating my data science career. And some of them were unexpected to me that I didn't know coming out of school what it would be like and there were some unexpected realities.

And so today I'm going to talk to you about three of these, expanding your network, finding your niche and advocating for yourself.

Expanding your network

So to start expanding your network, and when I was in my first internship, I would hear the word networking and I would cringe because I, like I said, I'm more of an introvert and networking doesn't come easy to me talking to different people about their career aspects and career journeys was not something that was natural for me. But expanding your network is so much more than that. It's finding your people, it's finding resources in your company, in the community that you can ask questions to that can be there for for help. And also, it's about finding friends, finding friends at work and finding those that you really enjoy spending time with.

And I learned this lesson at my first internship. So I had an internship between the junior and senior year of my undergrad, where I traveled across the country, I really was excited to work on this project and be a part of this intern program, where I was able to actually start Shiny. So I learned how to do a Shiny app and was really excited to dive into this and be able to produce a good product for the company. So I really focused on that and focused on learning this new skill and working on this project. But there were so many other interns there that I was able to meet. And there was one intern in particular that met with me during the internship, that he asked me some questions about my project about my career aspirations, what I was doing in school, and just got to know me on a more personal level.

Later in the internship, we had our final presentations, and I went to his and he talked about his project that he worked on, but also all of the different people that he had met with over the course of the internship, internship, both interns and full time employees alike. He asked them questions like, what do you like about your job? What do you not enjoy? What are some career opportunities for me? Or what is your career journey like? And he really was able to gain so many more insights, I felt like and I really felt like I'd missed out on an opportunity to really get more insights from the people around me.

And so a couple years later, I had another internship between in the summer between my first and second year of grad school. So I decided to try to prioritize more of my time in this internship while working on my project, to also put time into meeting others, and getting to know them and also asking questions about what they do, what they like about their job. And I talked to different data scientists, analysts, biostatisticians around the around the organization, to basically get some career advice for them and figure out if the company was a good fit for me. And by the end of this experience, I had gained so many resources around me that I was able to say hi to people in the halls. And I was able to have people to ask questions to and really, I actually ended up with more friends from this internship, and more people that I could keep in contact with.

So how might you expand your network? And for me, it comes down to setting little goals. Maybe it's talking to someone in a coffee chat, maybe it's virtual or in person, depending on your work style. But me asking them about their career journey about what they like, what they don't like about their jobs, and maybe just getting to know each other on a personal level. You may attend an after-work events or a social or join a club at work if there are those or employee resource groups. For me, I've been very fortunate enough to join an employee resource group at my company and be on the committee for that group. So I've been able to help organize events and get to know colleagues that I wouldn't have been able to meet otherwise. And it's been an enriching experience where I've had incredible opportunities from it. Or if you don't have these opportunities at work, you might find the online communities or groups to join. And I mean, we're here at Posit.com, there are so many different opportunities and groups that meet and so many different ways to get to know others.

But remember, it gets easier every time you do it. So if you set a little goal to maybe do one coffee chat a month or go to an event and talk to one new person, every time you do it, it will get easier and it'll be more natural for you to do.

Finding your niche

So the second point that I wanted to talk about today is finding your niche. And this is finding your passion, finding what you enjoy doing and what makes you tick. And when I was thinking about this, I really like basketball and the NBA. And in the NBA, there is a term called the role player. So a team may have different role players that do different aspects of the team. And so there could be three point shooters, you could have a person that's very good at defense, and the teams will have different roles to support the superstars.

So one ultimate role player that I can think of is Draymond Green. And Draymond Green plays for the Golden State Warriors, which I'm a Celtics fan. So it's not super fun to talk about Draymond Green, but he is very, a very good example of this where he really helps those around him score. And really, his main niche is to be a vocal leader and an energizer for the team. And so the team, the other players on the team look to him for energy and for the leadership that they need. And because of that, he's been a big part of the I believe four championships in the last decade that the Golden State Warriors have had.

So what might be your niche? What could be the thing that you're passionate about? And there's many different things that it could be many different ideas. I only listed a couple here. But one is you could be a subject matter expert, there could be a topic in your industry that you're very passionate about, or that you really want to learn more about and dive into. You might be the only shiny person on your team, or you really could be the only R person at your company. There are many different ways of being a subject matter expert. You might be the person that knows everyone that is able to bring people together and help them collaborate and communicate cross functionally. You might be the person that really understands the end to end data workflow and people come to you to know what data processes go with what and how to navigate those different, different things. You might be in a more of a managerial role where you do well in developing the careers of others, and organizing teams and helping them to collaborate well.

But really, it comes down to what is your passion? What do you enjoy doing? What is an area of your work that you wish you could do more of day to day. And so your niche may change over time. And that's okay. And it's important to think of what sets you apart, what could you bring to the table that's different from others on your team.

Advocating for yourself

And the third point I wanted to talk about today is advocating for yourself, being able to put yourself out there and sell yourself, maybe sell the contributions that you're making to the company. And for me, this is the most uncomfortable thing to do. I don't enjoy talking about my accomplishments and trying to push those out there and trying to put myself in different areas where I may not feel as comfortable. But I do know that it's important for my career development to at least advocate for myself in the projects that I want to work on in the career path that I want to go. And so it's important for me to share that with others.

So when I was in grad school, I learned a little bit more about how to do this. And so my first I was in a two year master's program. And in the first year of that program, I had a year long career development course. So we had a career coach that led us through lectures of resume development of cover letters, interviewing, networking. And one lesson we had was about negotiating. And so one thing that she would always say is to know your worth, then ask for it. So this had to do with salary negotiation, and not not just salary negotiation, but also knowing your the benefits that you want and knowing what other at least in my case, knowing what other bio statisticians were making and, and knowing your worth and being able to ask for it.

But we can also apply this same principle in advocating for yourself at work. Know your worth, know what you are capable of not not just knowing your worth, but it may be knowing your abilities or knowing your aspirations, and then ask for it. Your manager may not know everything that you're capable of all of the different skills that you have. And they definitely probably don't know all of your career aspirations where you want to go. And it may be that you don't know yet. And so before you ask for it, you have to figure out on your own what abilities you have what what or what do you want to learn? And where do you want to take your your different roles? Where do you want your career to go? So once you know that, then you can ask for it.

Know your worth, then ask for it.

So what are different things you might advocate for? I've kind of alluded to this already, but maybe you advocate for a new project, maybe there is something going on in a different department at your work that you want to be a part of. Or maybe there's a project that would help you learn a new skill that you want to learn. And so you might advocate for a new project, you might advocate for sharing your work, hashtag open source, sharing what you've developed with, within your team within your organization, or just in the broader community. You might advocate for more responsibility, maybe you reach the point that you feel like you have a good grasp of what you're working on, you understand it well. And you might advocate for more responsibility. On the flip side, you might advocate for less responsibility if you feel like you haven't been bogged down too much. And this depends on the company, you might not be able to ask for less responsibility. But you can advocate for yourself and what you what you need. And one other idea is just to advocate for personal development. You're all here at PositConf. So you're getting personal development here. And you might advocate for more of that, or more different aspects of that in your in your work.

Putting it all together

So I've talked about a few different points here about expanding your network, finding your niche, advocating for yourself. And these can be difficult. And especially for me, I've mentioned I'm an introvert. So a lot of these have to do with working with people and cloud and collaborating and communicating. And it may not be natural for data science professionals to, to transition into these areas, but they are important to what we want, what we want to accomplish in our careers.

So you might feel like me, and especially after the PositConf, like this koala bear, where it's it can be uncomfortable to talk to people and especially all day and expanding your network and trying to accomplish all these goals that you set for yourself. But the thing is just to set little goals and see what you can do. And in the long run, that's when you can look back and see what you've done.

So I want to return back to where we began, back to this highly researched data that I presented to you at the beginning, and try to see where it might go for you. Maybe in your first year you advocate for yourself and you get onto this new project where you learn a skill that later on you're able to leverage in a future job interview or in a future project at the same company. And then a few years later, you're about five years in, you attend an after work social where you set a goal for yourself that you're going to talk to one person before you left that day. So you end up finding someone you talk to them, and you find out that there is some overlap in your projects and you have you have resources that you can share between each other. And not only do you have this person that you can turn to at your company for a resource, you also have ended up making a lifelong friend. And then a few years later, maybe 10 years into your career, you are able to transition from a data role to a project manager or subject matter expert role. Because early on in your career, you decided that you really wanted to learn about this specific topic in industry and you became an expert on this idea. And it ended up years later, being an inflection point for you to use that knowledge in transitioning roles.

So oftentimes, we won't know until later on in our career that when we look back, there were these different inflection points that led us to where we are today, and to see where the career takes us. But it's about putting in the little efforts now to see where it takes us.

So as I was thinking about what I would share today, and also thinking back to when I was in school about what a data science career would look like, I was thinking about the different technical skills that I brought to the table. And I thought those technical skills would be the most important thing that I brought to a data science career. And while they're very important, there's so much more to a data science career, and so many things that were unexpected for me, that are very important in where a career path takes us. And it all kind of came down to the idea that it's not just about the data, it's also about the people. Thank you.

it's not just about the data, it's also about the people.

Q&A

All right, caught me off guard. All right, so we have time for questions. Sure. Okay. All right. Question number one. How do you balance your day to day tasks with work passion projects that could benefit the company? And how do you prioritize time for that?

That's a great question. I think for me, it's difficult because there are certain projects that have to be done. I mean, there are different deliverables that you can't just leave aside to work on your work passion projects. And I think it's important to keep those passions in mind, even when you can't work on them. But it's also open. It's also good to have open communication with your manager and what are you working on? What do you want to be working on? So that they know that the manager knows what you want to be doing. So that even though if you don't have enough time to work on it now, they can also, your manager can support you in what you want to do. And so you can kind of set aside, it may not be all the time you want to work on your work passion project now, but it might turn into something more, especially if you're sharing what you're developing, so that it is known.

All right, we have another question. Since you talked about advocating for less responsibility, how would you do that?

That's a great question, because I have not done that yet. That's an excellent question. Honestly, I think it kind of comes back to what I was saying in the last question. It's really about open communication for me. I mean, I like I said, I can't really answer this question, honestly, because I haven't done it. But and in some cases, you might not be able to advocate it, you might not be able to ask for less responsibility and haven't given it to you. But having open communication with your manager with your with those around you, I think can only help. So not the best answer for that question. But that's my thoughts.

All right, we have a couple of more. Also, because we have time. Do you have any online resources for extending your data science career?

Online resources? That's a great question. So I guess extending your data science career is that this might be I think whenever I hear that, I think of all of the technical skills that I could be learning could be doing for extending my data science career. Which was the exact opposite of what I just spoke about. And so that's an interesting question. I think I don't know if I have any specific resources per se, I think there's lots of different websites that you can go to to learn more skills. But also, I think kind of going along with what I was saying about expanding your network is you I learned so much from the people around me. And so learning from them going to I love going to webinars and finding different like the data science hangout that Rachel does. And some of the I think they're shiny gatherings and some of those different online resources that are more of interactive virtual virtual hangouts. I think I learned the most from those and gain so many insights from the people around me that it may not be something like different articles that I read, but more just I learned so much from the people that are that actually doing the data science.

All right. We'll have one more question. For those of us who are in our later career stages or later in life. Do you have any advice for them who are feel like they've sort of missed that initial data science?

Yeah, I was actually going to mention something I forgot to say that I don't think any of these any of these points that I made apply only to early careers. I think you can start any day. I think you can start today at PositConf. You can go out and go to the lounge and talk to people there. You can go just talk to the person sitting next to you at in the different sessions and get to know them and and see feel free to ask them questions about their career journey and about what they like about their job. Maybe that'll lead you to find something new that you didn't know about or find a new path something some new topic that you want to look into. So yeah.

All right. That's time. So let's give Brendan another hand round of applause. Thank you.