Q&A: Academia --> School Of Hard Knocks --> Data Scientist

Academia

In the dim past, I thought I'd get my degree and become a professor or mad scientist or something, your typical grad student idiocy. Of course, it quickly turned out that my preferences were exactly the opposite. It would have been the curse of a lifetime to have gotten what I wanted back then.

The aforementioned school of the knocking

Aside from setting a Duke Nukem Forever record for how long I took to finish my dissertation, I spent the next 10 years doing different things every job. Different company sizes, types of consulting, clients (mostly gov, but not all), and completely unrelated projects. Not everything was awesome.

...And then a funny thing happened

I learned about 1001 subjects, saw 1001 data problems, and taught myself a bunch of IT/programming/data science stuff. I'm a specialist in computer simulation by training. "Data science" didn't exist when I entered the job market. Furthermore, I was kind of a naive, self-centered, arrogant, cynical, Dunning-Kruger, AFRAID, tech dork. I was incapable of seeing outside my own blinders to understand how people, organizations, projects, and markets work.

Now, I'm solving difficult and interesting problems, and practically helping clients do things.

WSO Podcast: Member @Sasha Lubyansky"

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