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Data-Driven Leadership and Careers

Before You Ask “Why”… Ask “Who”

Questions you’ll learn to ask when you mature as a data scientist

Cassie Kozyrkov
Towards Data Science
4 min readSep 16, 2022

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Here are the stages of evolution that you’ll go through if you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to mature as a data scientist.

Modified from a photo by Pawel Chu on Unsplash

Stage 1 — “How?”

During the freshly hatched phase, the larval data scientist cheerfully does whatever they’re told without so much as an inquisitive chirp. You’ve barely finished describing the problem and they’re already thinking about how they can solve it as correctly and objectively as possible.

After all, they spent decades solving complicated homework problems without asking themselves whether there’s anything ridiculous about calculating how many spherical cows would be left in a field after 10 years if the you start with 50 cows whose lifespans are distributed GEOM(8)...

Ah, the (emotional) elasticity of youth. You’ll grow out of it. (Unless you have a phenomenal manager, that is. Then you won’t be incentivized by suffering and you can stay in Neverland. Lucky you.)

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Towards Data Science
Towards Data Science

Published in Towards Data Science

Your home for data science and AI. The world’s leading publication for data science, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence professionals.

Cassie Kozyrkov
Cassie Kozyrkov

Written by Cassie Kozyrkov

Chief Decision Scientist, Google. ❤️ Stats, ML/AI, data, puns, art, theatre, decision science. All views are my own. decision.substack.com

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