Before picking up (or) equipping skills for a career in data science.

Knowing our passion, Knowing the degree of our burning desire. Knowing our readiness-level. Know our perseverance. Know our vision. Know our focus. Knowing ourselves is the most important quest to accomplish before we try to SHAPE ourselves!

I have received a lot of queries these days regarding what kinds of skills to pick up for a career in data science. I am not a guru yet. I am still learning. But I would love to share my personal approach before diving deeply into a specialization for my career (for me, it was Business Intelligence). I used the following approach 7 years ago. It might be outdated but I hope it works for you.

Before picking up (or) equipping skills, you should learn yourself first. Check your soul! Check your heart! Sometimes people are misguided by TREND. My suggestion is to follow your HEART and not the TREND! If your HEART (or) SOUL knows that you are going for this career, the next step for you is to ANALYZE yourself. Where are you (your skills) right now? List them down on paper! Where do you want to go? Business Intelligence (BI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science (DS), Machine Learning (ML), Data Engineering (DE), and other data science specializations.

List the required skills to become a BI, AI, DS, ML, DE. Where are you right now and where you want to go? How big is the skills gap?

What is the purpose? Are you picking these skills just for your KNOWLEDGE (or) are you picking these skills for building your skills (which can be applied for your career advancement and generate income for you).

Have you checked yourself that you are learning deeply (or) the other way around? Do you have enough FOCUS and GRIT(perseverance)to take a long journey? Do you have enough FOCUS and GRIT (perseverance) to learn deeply about a particular subject?

Data Science is ‌a FANCY & SEXY term. But the pursuit of becoming a data scientist is not a SHALLOW LEARNING. Data Science, by its nature, is definitely not a SMALL AMOUNT OF ITERATION, LEARNING, APPLYING, TESTING, FAILING, RETESTING, OVERCOMING FAILURES, DEPLOYING, and REVAMPING. It is not a SHORT TERM LEARNING. It is definitely not a SHORT TERM JOURNEY.

Knowing our passion, Knowing the degree of our burning desire. Knowing our readiness level. Know our perseverance. Know our vision. Know our focus. Knowing ourselves is the most important quest to accomplish before we try to SHAPE ourselves!

with Mittā

Yemunn