After leaving quantitative finance, my first experience as a data scientist was in consulting. Most of the feedback I received in my early days at McKinsey was not related to my code or technical skills, but instead consisted of advice like “you should tie your work to the company/organization's top-level priority”, “you should add sharper ideas” or “should be more of a thought partner.”
At the time, being one of the few data scientists in a sea of generalist consultants, many of these comments initially struck me as confusing consulting jargon and I would have preferred someone to critique my code. Now that I'm a manager and look back, I realize that these seemingly disconnected points are all related to one thing: the mindset that I lacked when I was a junior IC focused on polishing my technical skills.
I was purely focused on execution rather than acting as a problem owner; However, thinking that my job was just to perform a task well was a mistake in retrospect. Over the years since then, I've become convinced that an ownership mindset is one of the key things that sets high performers apart from their peers.
