Stokes Matrices & Data Engineering
What Writing a PhD Thesis In Singularity Theory Has Taught Me About Data Engineering
In August 2017 I started writing my phD thesis in a field called singularity theory. Not the fun AI kind of theory, but the mathematical version about “when unexpected things happen”. And so it happened, that while I was still sitting more in my office than actually writing, a friend walked in. We chatted about phD thesis, and he reminded me how long it usually takes to complete such a phD thesis: 4–5 years, 3 if you’re good.
That was unexpected, at least for me.
I already had two children and was determined to finish fast; Thanks almost entirely to my phD supervisor (Claus Hertling), I picked up a few meta skills that helped me to ultimately finish in December 2019, a bit short of 2.5 years.
After finishing my thesis, I started to work as a data engineer at Unite. And it turned out, the skills I had picked up helped me to excel there as well. I was able to quickly pick up all relevant technical and people skills to get work done, using a lot of the meta skills I learned during writing my phD thesis.
Today, I want to share 7 of them.
