Careers in data are not for everyone: it takes patience to work with evolving business, security and infrastructure requirements and a good amount of mental stamina to work with endless data problems and changes. But they can also be the most interesting jobs in the world. Every month there is a new puzzle to put together in a new way, and new technologies and innovations keep the field continually new. Data races will also become even more vital as ai demands larger and more diverse training data sets.
There's no one way to enter or continue a career in data, but let's start with a baseline roadmap that will serve as the framework for this article, and then we can talk about the decision points and phases you'll encounter along the way. If you are a data scientist, data engineer, software developer, business analyst, or infrastructure/security specialist, these paths could apply to you.
Roadmap to a data race
Next, before we explore the roadmap, let's look at some of the reasons why you might be reading this article. Do any of these common complaints match your current experience?
- “I'm not sure how to start and if a college education is worth investing in.”
- “I can't walk in the door to get my first job.”
- “My job is getting tedious and a little boring. “I’m ready for something different.”
- “In my job, I'm stuck on old technologies or programming languages. How do I improve my skills?
- “I feel like a small cog in a big machine. “I wish I had a role with more influence and visibility.”
- “I want to go into management, but I need a path.”
We can group these concerns into the following professional phases:
Concerns of data professionals by career phase.
In the roadmap we can find key questions and considerations for each of the phases.
Your perspective on starting a career will be affected by a variety of factors.
- Your family culture related to formal education and careers. Did your parents go to university?
- Resources and Preparation: Do you have financial aid? How well did you do in high school?
- Economic conditions: When was the last recession? How high is unemployment?
- Career Guidance: How do you define the right work-life balance? How motivated are you to move up the promotion ladder?
- Interest in theory vs. application: Do you lean toward practical technical skills that you can use right away? Or would you prefer to delve deeper into computer algorithms or statistical theory?
Based on those factors, you may decide that spending 3 months and a few hundred dollars on some certifications in a practical and technical area such as Microsoft login ID is right for you. At the other end of the spectrum, you may decide that 8 years to earn a bachelor's degree and a PhD in Statistics fits your aspirations. There are dozens of path combinations, but the main question is whether you want to make the effort to build a broad, solid foundation or if you feel like you have limited time and money and need a job ASAP.
In the pitching phase, it's important to research future roles that appeal to you and then study the job descriptions for those positions. Depending on the job descriptions, you can reverse engineer the steps you'll need to take to get there. What are the skills, programming languages and experience required for those roles? With those elements in mind, you can create goals to improve your skills in those specific areas.
Regardless of your path, one of the biggest challenges is reaching out to a company in your target field for the first time. Having taken some random online courses will not help in this situation. You need to find a way to add to your resume some clear credentials, an official title, or documented accomplishments in a recognized project experience forum such as kaggle. When selecting from your options, look closely at the completion rates of different programs and make sure you feel like you can fully commit to finishing before making any payments or falling into debt.
Finally, be creative when expanding your network. Join a school technology club; attend meetings with a local technology group; Look for an upcoming industry conference with networking events. And if you've attended a school with a career center, become best friends with everyone in the office and ask them for help finding open positions that other people might overlook. You may find a niche position, a prime track, or an unadvertised vacancy, that won't have 500 other applicants online.
As time goes on, you'll need to be prepared to change and retrain as your company changes direction, your job role is reassigned, or you move to a new job at a new company. In the roadmap, these minor changes are referred to as the need to “take the next step.”
If those steps require you to work with new technologies or learn a new skill adjacent to your current skill set, then online courses are a great way to help you navigate the changes.
Online courses, such as those offered by Data Camp either Pluralview, are practical, specific and cost-effective, and can be grouped into several certifications. However, the great challenge of these courses is that their completion rate is abysmal (often below 10%). If your company offers training funds, or if you can negotiate the funds, be sure to use them wisely and complete your courses.
Career progression is often a greater challenge for technical data professionals than managing career changes. If you decide to pursue a promotion beyond the senior analyst/developer/engineer level, the challenges come in three forms:
– The skills that make a great developer, analyst, or engineer are different from those needed to be a great team leader or manager (i.e. what got you here won't get you there)
– Business awareness and context for management work are difficult to acquire while working with technical data.
– The network of relationships you have developed as an individual contributor is different from the network you will need as a manager.
A formal university master's degree is a great way to solve those three problems. The new master's programs are designed to be shorter, more specific, and more flexible to the time constraints of people with a full-time job. Online degrees are not as effective at building a network of relationships, but you may decide that the flexibility is worth it.
At the center of the roadmap is the comfort zone labeled “null.” Unfortunately, this is where many of us end up. We let our manager decide what skills or projects we are assigned to develop. We let company layoffs determine the timing of our next career move. Or we look for options to improve our career, but decide they are too intimidating or expensive.
His career will last between 40 and 45 years; Isn't it worth being proactive about the path we want to take?
Stan Pugsley is an independent data engineering and analytics consultant based in Salt Lake City, UT. He is also a professor at the University of Utah's Eccles School of Business. He can communicate with the author by email.
