From Pool Boy To Senior Data Engineer In 2.5 Years

How I balanced 14-hour shifts at Disney resorts with learning data science and improbably landed a data engineering job.

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Hoping to escape the brutal central Florida heat, I stop in the shadow of a Dalmatian and check my phone to watch the day’s last moments of free time tick away. Later in the day the three-story plaster statue will provide refuge from the sun for suitcase toting families. For now it’s my last stop before clocking in for a second consecutive 14 hour shift at a resort pool.

Unfortunately, this is the reality in pandemic-stricken Disney; the upside of the labor shortage means that on mandatory overtime I only have to work three days a week, leaving the rest of the time to finish my data science M.S. and search for a job that doesn’t require sanitizing the same row of plastic chairs for 4 hours at a time.

Looking back on my pre-data engineering days, I can say I was grateful for work during a time when 30,000 of my coworkers, including a member of my household, were without a paycheck. Other than that the optimism was difficult to maintain. If that stretch of months provided anything it was an urgency to advance and apply skills I had spent 2 years honing, much of it during a once-in-a-generation medical emergency.