Well, everyone is chatting about ChatGPT. I will too. My data science career to this point has been more of an analyst or maybe statistician than a data scientist. Working in small healthcare tech for the past almost 8 years, my work has never gone anywhere beyond a simple xgboost model and 99% of the time involves basic analytics and ...

Brian Dailey recently had a LinkedIn post about the use of PowerPoint and the value of a well-written narrative over a pptx deck. It reminded me of Jeff Bezos’ famous banning of PowerPoint in Amazon meetings. I don’t think this got the attention it really needed. When I first started in small business, there was so much focus on creati...

I was whining over the phone to a close friend and life collaborator yesterday. I was talking about how I wasn’t sure I was working on the right things, what’s my value proposition to the company, yada yada. I was having a little moment. I started pointing out how sometimes it feels like I do work very quickly, and maybe this is just a...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to make a successful data science team, or what that even means. There’s a ton of blogs and papers and books on this topic, but it still seems elusive. In my mind, a successful data science/AI program is one that is highly engaged with the business, has developed, scaled, and deployed...

I spoke with a young data engineer today who is considering dropping out of her master of data science program halfway through. While I still don’t think I have magic unicorn glitter to bestow upon anyone, I hope that I convinced her to stick it out. When I was a PhD student, 4 years into a 5-year effort things got really dark. It was ...

At my last job, I was a data science leader and managed people for the first time. I did a few things right, but a lot of things wrong. I recall one seminal moment, when my leader gave me my last performance review before leaving. It wasn’t exactly negative, but somewhere south of favorable. He indicated (and I’m paraphrasing from memo...

I get calls and emails and offers of coffee and lunches from students, young(er) data scientists (because I’m still young, amirite?), folks wanting to break into the data science field all the time. I’m not entirely sure how I became an oracle of knowledge when it comes to career development, but it feels like that’s true. And without ...

Like many during the pandemic, I’ve seen an uptick in spam and robo calls, typically wanting to extend my car warranty (which has spawned a treasure trove of internet memes sure to entertain on a slow Friday night), sell me various items, including Medicare insurance (am I that old yet?), and a small list of other revenue-generating de...

My leader asked me in a 1:1 recently, ‘Where will data science be in 5 years?’ I somewhat sheepishly replied, ‘I don’t think there will be data science in 5 years.’ Oooff. Not to talk myself out of a job here, but for as many success stories around data science as I hear, it (albeit subjectively) feels like I hear 5x as many stories of...