My Journey to Data Scientist
I am Zin Tun, a Data Scientist, with more than 4 years of experience in Software Test Engineering.
I am sharing my career journey : how I started my career as Software Test Engineer and how I made transition into Data Scientist.
Hi, Working Life!
I was final year Computer Engineering student when I started hunting my very first job in 2015. I asked myself “what do I love to do?”. I know that I love to spend a lot of time thinking about the problems as well as identifying possible causes from various angles. So, I applied “Software Test Engineer” position at my current company.
A week later, I got a call from HR informing me that I was shortlisted for interview. I was very happy. There were three rounds of interview: phone interview, technical coding test and final face-to-face round. After going through phone interview and coding test, I was invited to join final round called “Super day”. Oh boy, it was an intensive half day interview. There were around 10 selected candidates including me and we had to go into three designated rooms where interviewers will be waiting for us. I still remember, my last interviewer asked me if I am also interested in “Software Developer” position as I have strong technical background. I politely replied to him that I am only interested in Test Engineer position. The reason is due to my love towards thinking about the problems and solving them.
At that specific time, I have no knowledge about Data Science and totally unaware of it.
So, How do I end up as a Data Scientist?
How we met
To my joy, I was offered the position and started my first career as Software Test Engineer where my primary role involved web-based application testing, and writing automation scripts. As a fresh graduate, I was curious and attended internal seminars, events and knowledge sharing sessions to expand my knowledge.
One day, I happened to attend the event where the presenter showcased about the usage of data and machine learning algorithm to detect real time fraud transactions. As a person loves to identify problems and solve them, I was in awe and inspired by the presentation.
Chasing My “Data Scientist” Dream
Since then, I started to look for Data Science related courses, and my news feed was started to occupy by Data Science articles. I enrolled myself into Master of Science Business Analytics (MSBA) program from National University of Singapore (NUS), which is the great step for me to go into Data Science Path. The program helped me harness with the analytical skills in terms of theoretically as well as practically.
Giving up simply is NOT an option!
I would admit that juggling work, part-time study and assignments is not easy. There were nights when I reached home at 3am from group projects, woke up at 8 am for work, and straight to school after work and the whole cycle could continue for a few consecutive days.
Giving up was not an option in the midst of chasing my dream. I managed to polish my analytic and programming skills via innovation challenges. My hand got really dirty : building prediction models, performing descriptive analysis, social network analysis and understanding causal relationship. It took me two good years with multiple hands-on projects to complete Master’s program.
You may wonder have I ever thought about quitting along the way. “Yes, I have! At least 149 times.” However, the hardship becomes insignificant when I put my dream of becoming Data Scientist into my life equation.
Join community
In addition to building models, creating and delivering insight is one of the important skills required in Data Science field.
I tried exploring BI tools such as PowerBI, and Tableau. As a newbie, I was not aware of available cool tricks and I struggled a bit to build dashboards.
Luckily, I happened to discover Tableau communities like #MakeoverMonday and #WorkoutWednesday. The new dataset is provided weekly, and we can build and share our dashboards with the community. We got feedbacks from others on our work as well as got chances to get inspirations from others.
According to my experience, joining community is very effective and fun way of learning new skill.
Finding entry points
Knowing is not enough, we must apply!
Willing is not enough, we must do!
—Bruce Lee
Transitions are hard, especially if we have little experience. But, we can create own opportunity by applying what we have learnt at the current work.
For example, even though my team was purely technology team, building web applications, I applied social network analysis technique to understand how the changes of one component effect the others.
And also, by using analytic skill, I built the performance dashboards of our applications. With these insights, the stakeholders could manage the resources effectively.
From my humble point of view, analytic skill is applicable everywhere, every industry. I firmly believe that applying what we have learnt can add value to the team as well as help us improve our skills. Who knows these could be the entry points for our next adventure?
Make friends
Now, we have skills as well as experiences and we are excited to leap into Data Science Path. Having good connections could smoothen the job-hunting process.
I joined badminton interest group in our company. Every week, we have friendly games and I get to know a lot of colleagues outside our technology department. Fortunately, a colleague from badminton club knew about my interest in Data Science. She introduced me to another colleague from analytics team and he in-turn linked me to Vice President of the team, who is very kind to invite me to join the Data Science events. It is very invaluable opportunity for me to learn about things they are doing in analytics team.
When there is an opening position for Data Scientist, I applied for it. As I had attended the Data Science events, I am familiar with the nature of job that I applied. This is great help for me during interview processes. After multiple rounds of interview, I was offered my dream job “Data Scientist”. I was over the moon at that day.
From Software Test Engineer to Data Scientist
Most people think that transition to different field means starting from scratch. I would disagree with it. Skills are reusable. I could map my skills, acquired from Software Test Engineer into my current Data Scientist role. My background has made me implement writing reusable codes and using version control, making things automated to improve the process.
My final thoughts
There is no right or wrong approach when pursuing our dreams. The above mentioned are path that I had chosen and things happened to me. Just my final words:
· Big change is the result of tiny steps: start with simple small steps
· Never Give Up: Be passionate, dedicated and believe in yourself
· The best way of learning anything is by doing: apply what you have learnt
· Friends make life so much better: make good friends
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