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20 Lessons learned going from Junior Data Scientist to Chief Data Scientist
3 years spent eating, sleeping, and breathing data science
When I got my first corporate “data scientist” gig a few years ago, I barely knew what a decision tree was, I had no clue about why people kept talking about random forests, and I had no grasp on what people actually meant when they talked about “AI,” which to me was primarily associated with dystopian movies. I was quite overwhelmed, to put it mildly.
These days I feel a lot more at ease, comfortably reading research papers from a wide range of topics within AI and ML, giving keynote talks, being a lead data scientist in a corporate pharma company, and so on. A lot of lessons have been learned along the way. In this post, I’ll outline what I believe to be some of the biggest insights in no particular order and some general lessons for thriving in a corporate data science position.
Note: “Data science” varies a lot across different industries, so this is the perspective from someone working in corporate biotech/pharma companies.
1. Passion, Curiosity, and Capacity
Passion and curiosity are the most important qualities of a data scientist. If the…
