Q&A: George Reynolds, Data science fellow @ The Atlantic

Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s four brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, and Quartz.

Tell us about what you do.

I’m the data science fellow. From day to day, I’m helping the data science team out wherever they need me most. That involves doing data polls from different UI’s, doing work with Salesforce data, doing work with Google Analytics data, and doing work for whichever team needs data reporting on those fronts. From time to time I’ll also help out with some of our predictive modeling and other cool math stuff.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve gotten to do since the fellowship started?

The coolest thing was probably helping out with a Salesforce predictive model — trying to figure out which opportunities were the likeliest to close with a win.

What were you working on right before you answered these questions?

Actually a Salesforce report. I was pulling numbers on our print issue goals and how close we are to meeting them.

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given you?

The best time to do things is now.

The other one is, if you can’t win the game, change the rules.

What’s something you’ve learned in a non-media or non-data science related role that’s applicable to what you do now?

That’s an interesting question. I would say coming in early and staying a little bit late can help out.

How did you get to the fellowship?

Honestly, I just hated my job before this a lot, and in a fit of rage one week, sent out like five cold applications and this happened to be one of them. So yeah, I just totally fell into this.

Really happy that it worked out though, it’s been great!

What is your dream job?

Hype man for Waka Flocka.

Do you have any advice for people looking for entry level jobs in media or data science?

Hold out for a job that you really like. It sucks being in one that’s terrible and it’s great being in one that you like!