5 Resolutions to Set for the New Year as a Data Scientist
New year, new data scientist
As I mentioned in my last post, preparation is key if you want to achieve any of your New Year’s resolutions. Have you ever wondered why so many resolutions that started out with excitement in January peter out and fail by February? It’s because they weren’t sufficiently prepared for the previous year.
Preparing to achieve New Year’s resolutions doesn’t have to be as extreme as I may have just made it sound — you can stop running up “the Rocky steps” now.
All resolution preparation requires is having your resolutions in mind before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st and having your resources and schedule laid out for how you plan on achieving them in the New Year. This could be as simple as stating that you’ll become an expert in Excel by April 2023 and bookmarking some Youtube videos that will help with that goal. Alternatively, you could say that by the end of the year you want to develop AI that doesn’t discriminate against gender or skin color and set aside some academic literature on how best to make that happen (see resolution #3 below).
Since December is a hectic month at best, I wanted to provide you with some easy starting points for your resolution-making and preparation that will hopefully remove some of the stress that comes with the month in general (not to mention that you now know that you should have begun preparing to accomplish your New Year’s resolutions almost two weeks ago!).
#1. I will finally learn how to properly use GitHub.
How many of us have said over and over again that we’re going to actually learn how to use GitHub?
No matter what kind of data scientist you are, whether independent, corporate, or academic, learning how to properly use GitHub once and for all can have tremendous benefits.
You don’t have to be pushing code to a production environment for a company to appreciate the benefits of version control and collaboration that GitHub provides. Even if you’re a consultant working on code that will never see the light of day and is solely there to produce analyses and visualizations that will hit your client’s desk in a Word document, GitHub is still crucial to ensure that all of the different versions of your code are carefully maintained and backed up.
Therefore, this upcoming year is the time to finally set aside a couple of hours over a week to sit down and force yourself to learn how to properly use GitHub.
#2. I will suggest ways that I can provide more value to my company beyond building dashboards.
If the data science forums have been telling me anything lately it’s that many data scientists are becoming yet more disenchanted with their jobs than they were even six months ago.
Whether it’s because their job isn’t as exciting or sexy as they thought it would be, or because their work is amounting to little more than creating dashboards, data scientists are slowly becoming done with their work.
One data science forum poster stood out to me, describing how they have a pretty chill job that allows them all kinds of flexibility but requires little more than building dashboards. This has left them completely over their job and wanting to leave and become a farmer. While I’m all for slow living and the simple way of life that has become so popular since COVID-19 began, it also makes me sad that the job can be so uninspiring that it’s driving data scientists to leave altogether.
However, there is a way to avoid this.
This upcoming year is the year where you will try to make your job a happy, fulfilling one by suggesting how your company can expand your role and make better use of your talent — beyond building dashboards.
Data science jobs, especially good ones, are hard to come by, which is why I suggest that we should be changing the company atmosphere of data science instead of thinking that it’s a foregone conclusion. While some companies will outright say no way (you know the ones I’m talking about), others will be interested in hearing what you have to say. Many companies have little idea about what goes into data science, which gives you the leverage in developing your position to be more challenging and fulfilling.
This upcoming year is the year to be brave and suggest how you can provide more impact to your company — not only will it benefit your company, but it will also benefit you by providing the exact work environment you seek.
#3. I will look for new ways to minimize or eliminate ethical, ethnic, and social biases in my models.
If you haven’t already read this article by Joy Buolamwini on the racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence, pause your reading of this article and go read hers first: Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem with Gender and Racial Bias: Here’s How to Solve It.
Buolamwini’s article perfectly highlights the problems we currently have with AI that have been produced in the last many years, including faces with different skin colors not being recognized as faces, or women being misidentified as men.
While this article isn’t the place to dive deep into how we can resolve these biases, this resolution is the perfect place to start: this upcoming year is the perfect time to begin eliminating the biases in your models, including ethical, ethnic, gender, and social biases.
#4. I will focus on my economy of effort this year and automate the tasks that drain the life out of me.
It’s common for data scientists to get discouraged when they enter the workforce and realize that 80% of their work is menial, repetitive, and downright boring. Data scraping, cleaning, and preparation are all tasks that take the majority of your work day, leaving you little time to do the “fun” stuff of analyzing and visualizing your data.
That’s why, this upcoming year, you will begin automating the tasks that drain the life out of you, including the repetitive and menial stuff that is important but just too boring for words. This will leave you more time and energy to apply to the analysis and visualization of your work, which can lead to more specific and insightful results.
And most importantly of all, #5. I will find new ways to live a fulfilling life that leaves me refreshed and ready to get back into the office.
I remember watching a slightly comedic video on Instagram that compared the work-life balance of Europeans and Americans, and how European bosses encourage their staff to lead fulfilling lives full of hobbies and interests so that they can bring better energy to their jobs. Conversely, American bosses view fulfilling lives as getting in the way of their staff doing their jobs (ahem, Elon Musk putting beds in Twitter’s offices, ahem). Once you realized that the video was more true than comedic, it suddenly became sad.
I’ve been closely following the quiet quitting movement and how it has helped people regain lives full of family members, friends, hobbies, fresh air, and fulfillment. These people return to the office ready to work the next day because they’re refreshed not having had to bring their work home with them. How many hobbies or interests have you let go of because you felt that your career was more important? How many days of the week do you feel yourself dragging to get to the office and then having a hard time focusing all day because your brain is so exhausted from never having really gotten to shut off while you were at home?
That’s why, in my opinion, the most important resolution you will set for the upcoming year is to find new ways to live a fulfilling life that leaves you refreshed and ready to get back into the office.
I fear the tech industry will begin hemorrhaging staff if they begin to move in the way of Twitter by further encouraging staff to make their careers their lives. COVID-19 has taught us that there is so much more to life than our work. That’s why, for the preservation of data science careers, I believe it necessary for you to take up sourdough baking, spend time with your parents, go for a hike, learn an instrument, write a novel, lift weights, learn how to fix a car, and more.
Your ability to be a good data scientist is strictly tied to your ability to live a fulfilling life. A fulfilling life will bring you back into the office on Monday ready to work, share new ideas, try new concepts, work as a team, and bring greater value to your company.
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