Meet Simon and read about his first weeks as a data scientist at VIDA
Simon joined our VIDA data science team as an intern in March and soon he will start his masters thesis with us. He is finishing his degree in Politics & Technology at the Technical University of Munich, where he studied the transformational effect of disruptive technologies like Machine Learning on politics and society. Having lived in the US, Argentina and Japan, he now returned to his hometown, Munich, to start his career with us.
What are you really good at?
I am really good at languages! I am fluent in German, English, Japanese and Spanish, and I also speak a bit of French. In terms of programming languages, I am pretty good at Python and I know my share of SQL, C and Java.
What do you want to learn?
First of all, I thrive to become a better person. I want to be an empathetic listener and engaging conversation partner because I love to learn what motivates and drives other people and understand their perspective. Second, I want to become better at what I do professionally. For my job at VIDA this means becoming a better data scientist and a python magician. This is the first time for me to work in a professional software development team, and I feel like I found the perfect environment to achieve this goal. Third, I want to become a better storyteller, because I think I lack that skill. I want to be able to transmit an idea or concept concisely and accurately, while grabbing the listeners full attention.
How were your first weeks at VIDA?
They were exciting! It’s been a steep learning curve from day one, particularly since last week I started working on the code and peer programming with one of my colleagues. We were working together on a merge request and I loved how we could combine our different skills and knowledge to improve the code. It is also fascinating to see how such an international team with different cultural backgrounds, and scattered across the whole world (London, Stockholm, Vienna, Munich, Cape Town, Mumbai, Kharkov) can work together on a goal so effectively.
Thank you for the talk, we’re glad to have you on our team!
Here is Simon’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-leo-kohlhase-621a9ba8/
And here is more on VIDA: www.villagedata.io
