hi friends welcome back to another video in today's video i wanted to talk about how i
transition into data science without having a data science degree i am a self-taught data scientist
and i wanted to specifically share my journey and highlight things that help me in that journey to
kind of transition to data science without having that degree i'm a self-taught data scientist and
i've been in the industry for about eight years now and i worked at two big tech companies and
have learned a lot over the years that i want to share with all of you and one of the things that i
i thought it is important to mention is my journey and my transition from having no
degree in data science to working at one of the biggest tech companies in the world uh let's go
back a bit so some of you probably came across my channel so i started out at a community college
actually because i was starting from scratch in a way i am actually a high school dropout uh
the reasons i won't go into detail but i have a six year gap between my high school
and my university so when i started all over again actually started at a community college
and i was i took two years of community college and took online classes at that community college
for the first two years and i was trying to when i was trying to deciding to go back my goal was to
uh basically pursue a business degree because that's what i was introduced to growing up and i
didn't know that data science draw family existed or people can actually work from their computers
which is mind-boggling to me and i can't i can't i i didn't grow up with the phone i don't know
if you did but i did not grow up with a phone or computer like we didn't have a computer in
our house and people in my circle didn't work in tech so like i wasn't exposed to it so that
was one of the reasons when i decided to go back i decided to pursue a business major so when i went
to the community college i was basically preparing my portfolio my basically my course portfolio for
a business degree so that's what i ended up doing took a lot of like prerequisites for the business
school applied to the business school got rejected then got accepted ended up making to university of
washington business school as a transfer student and it was actually my third year well my first
year at university washington but my third year of my undergrad degree when i took a class
at the business school one of the things that that my advisor told me was that take classes across
all the majors that are offered within business school and one of the majors was that was offered
was information systems not a major i think minor uh was information systems so i ended up taking
that class and in that class basically that class introduced me to databases to sql to data analysis
and after i took that class i realized like this is it that's what exactly what i want to do and
i want to pursue a career in data at that point i still had no clue like data science is the job
family that exists i was just going after the data data analysis and sql and the database management
type of courses so i started taking like online courses in like databases and started taking
online courses in sql and trying to get more and more because it was too late for me to change my
major because i was already in my third year so i realized at that point like it's actually because
given i had worked so hard to get into business school i remember i mentioned that i was actually
rejected and then i was accepted so i i had to like i had shed a lot of tears and
all the hard work was behind it that that honestly like at that point i was like do i really want to
leave business school i worked so hard to get here but i ended and like that wasn't even a
choice because i was like so close to graduation so i decided to like take a lot of courses um
like reading through the online blogs and i think w3school was one of the big ones back
then i think it still is so i started doing like a lot of like sql practices on w3 schools and
explore some of the courses that are available on websites such as like coursera on udemy so
eventually i got more the more i did it the more i got interested in the field and at this point
i still had no clue that data science job family exists so i ended up doing internship at my last
company which was uh which is that internship was more focused on the financial analyst
that the title was financial analysts in turn so i did that internship and i got exposed to a
lot of people in the industry who was who were working as data engineers as data scientists
and as a data analyst and i network a lot with those people during my time in the internship and
i kind of like talk to them ask them questions and kind of like figure out what i want to do
eventually the data engineering role seemed super interesting at that point so after finishing my
internship even though like my team was asking me to come back as a financial analyst full-time i
told them like that's not what i want to do so i ended up finishing my internship went back to uw
and ended up taking a lot of courses that are more into database management outside of business
school there was school called high school information school so i ended up taking a bunch of
courses uh there i remember the three courses that i did there i'm gonna link them in the description
the it's a certificate the three courses that i took that basically made up into a nice
certificate i'm gonna link it in the description the certificate like i got it later so um the
reason i'm mentioning it because like people as soon as i mentioned i took the certificate a lot
of people want to take it i got the certificate after i got my full-time offer so my certificate
wasn't like a influential in like having it on my resume it wasn't like a big influence
the knowledge that i learned helped me pass the coding interviews and those interviews i actually
landed through my networking because when i was in interning i started networking outside of my team
specifically with people who are working in tho in those roles that i want to get into so eventually
i landed myself a couple of interviews and taking those courses kind of helped me prepare for the
interview and gave me a really good understanding of how this whole data engineering world works um
eventually got offers from two different teams for the data engineering rule my team ended up finding
out that i got an offer for a date engineering role they finally decided to open a role that was
specific finally decided to open a role um for a data engineer in the team and they basically
offered me a job i decided to go with my internship team because i was already familiar
with the people that worked there and the people that worked there as well as like that domain i
was pretty familiar with the idea with the data and everything um got the full-time offer finished
my business degree and um transition into data engineer role worked there as a data engineer for
two years i enjoyed the data engineering process i really enjoyed the building part of it like i
had physical things that i could point to and i could also tell like how many people are using it
let's say if i build a new table i would know like how many people are this accessing this table and
how many people are using this table and that way like when it comes to like performance review and
things like that i was able to like mention those numbers specifically and the reason i'm
mentioning this because it's important as to what i'm going to say later after i transitioned to the
data science java family so at the end of the two years i started feeling pretty comfortable with
the data engineering draw family and i realized that i need to explore more within the data domain
ended up doing a project for my team the same team where i was working as a data engineer more on the
research and data analytics focus and that was the point where i realized like i want to go more into
like research focused projects um in the data domain and i want to go more into data sciencey
role started my job search again basically there was no opportunity in that team to transition to
data science because there were no data scientists there so i ended up talking to a lot of different
teams at my last company and um found this one manager that i talked to we had coffee and then i
told him basically like this is what i want to do like but i i because they needed a data engineer
but they were like a data scientist team so i told my 2b manager at that time that this is what
i'm interested in i can join your team and i can provide a lot of the data engineering skill set
but while i'm doing that i want to learn and i want to actually transition to a data scientist
role the manager was amazing because he ended up taking me in and basically i worked on a few data
engineering projects at the beginning uh at the beginning of my time there but eventually i was
given the opportunities to learn data science and having teammates who have worked at that
time in that team and data scientists in the team so having teammates who have worked data on data
science work i was able to learn from their work i was able to like read their paper i was able to
go through their code repository and see like how they did it so the next six months or so i spent a
lot of time like reading through their work then my manager would kind of like assign me reading
as in like books um to read and things to kind of like uh look into more um and we'll
use like our one-on-ones kind of like as like a learning session where i would ask questions
and then he will sometimes whiteboard or like point me to resources to kind of like learn
um yeah i did i give him a lot of credit because not all managers are like that i think it's very
dare to find a manager who is actually interested in growing your career and is willing to put
time and uh energy to kind of like help you grow so i got very lucky with that manager um
and eventually i knew after a few months i knew to some i knew data science to an extent where i was
given my own project and i was able to deliver it yes there would be times where i would give i was
given projects i would have to learn and then i would have to come to work and apply it so a
lot of that processes where i was like just thrown into problem and where i had to learn and apply it
learn and apply i think that did two things for me one is that it kind of like put um like i didn't
have an option other than to deliver right so like that created like a pressure setting for me
and i think like it depends from person to person some people don't like that environment like i
work very well when i'm on a deadline or when i'm given in when i'm in an environment i think there
is a thrive in a fast-paced environment basically that's what it means like you work on a deadline
and you work like very fast something i think i'm really really good at that like i like having
a time-bound um project because that encourages that pushes me to like do it so i think having
that on my projects was helpful because i i had a deadline to deliver a project the second it kind
of narrowed my learning because data science for java family is huge and you can get lost learning
everything and for me like going project based um with the project-based learning uh
framework i was able to narrow down things that i need to learn and then i apply it right away and
that it's it sticks with me i apply i i learned while doing it so it was like perfect setting for
me because i was not i was i would learn those whatever requirement would be for those project
and then i would learn and then i would apply and then it would stick with me because let's say next
project if it requires a similar set of skill set let's say linear regression if my second project
requires linear regression there's like less learning for me because i've already worked on
it and i'm able to kind of do it um so eventually my manager after building some portfolio of work
my manager ended up transitioning me to the data science job family i didn't have like um
as the title of this video says i didn't have um i don't have i still don't have a data science
degree and when my manager put in that proposal the hr actually had an issue with it because they
said that she doesn't have a degree in data science and why are you transitioning her
because a lot of the other people that i was working with they had like phds and in these they
had like phds and masters in statistics and things like that so my manager was again like he was a
great manager again he basically countered the hr and he said that if she can actually do the work
why do you care about having a check mark on the degree and that did the trick because then um
ended up getting converted to the data scientist raw family ended up working the team that i
worked at that time was primarily focusing on building advanced statistics that could
be used company-wide for a b testing analysis and experimentation that were run being in the company
ended up working there for about in that same role same team uh until three years and tell my
manager that i really really liked working with loft so after he left i kind of like made that
i kind of like decided to like leave the team as well as the company because i wanted to try
something different so yeah basically that was my transition from having no degree in data science
to becoming a data scientist working at one of the fan companies um so my advice to anybody who
is trying to transition to data science i think there's a lot of educational resources that are
out there that if you are disciplined enough you can create your own curriculum and you can kind
of like create that path for you to like study study in your own time and make that transition
but again like the environment that i had the opportunity that i had i understand that
not everybody gets it but if you do get that opportunity fully evangelize it if you're working
at a big company where you have the opportunity to pursue different roles and try out different
things like do that because that would be the least like from money standpoint that would be
the least that would be the least costly from the money standpoint because i did save a lot of money
by because i was getting paid while i was learning but that being said there are definitely a lot
of resources out there whether those are like programs such as master's program or undergrad
program or boot camps um or courses the online courses that are available that are available at
your fingertips now which which i didn't have when i was trying to make that transition i remember
i have been in the industry for about eight years and data scientists jaw family only started going
becoming glamorous i think after the 2014 harvard business review so since then there has been a lot
of educational resources and like youtube is one of them there's so many amazing youtubers
who are talking about data science um and so evangelize all those resources that are available
to you but my biggest tip would be to actually apply it i think it's it's very easy for us to
get lost because there's so much to learn narrow down your focus if you focus your um your learning
to like project-based learning let's say if you're trying to create a pro portfolio of data science
work if you figure out first like what projects you want to do um and then like create curate your
learning based off of those projects i think that could help you narrow down um your focus obviously
like this is one of the frameworks that you can use there are like so many frameworks that you
can use to learn data science and maybe i'll talk about it in a different video so yeah that's all
i wanted to share thank you if you made it this far into the video and i hope you're having a
great day and i hope you there was something that you learned from this from my journey
i also want to talk maybe i'll do another video where i want to talk about community colleges
and how my experience was because i think there is a lot of glamorization of ivy league schools and
things like that but i i think the the community colleges are like low-hanging fruits and i come
from a community college and i currently work at i worked at two big tech companies so they must be
doing something right to create people like me who are able to like make it in the industry without
having the ivy league degrees so i'll definitely do another video where i talk more in detail about
that so until then i hope you're having a great day and i'll talk to you in another video bye