Hi everyone welcome back to another youtube video in today's video i'm going to share my journey of
becoming a self-taught data scientist for those of you who have been subscribed to my channel um and
have watched some of the previous videos you would know that i've actually recorded this video before
however unfortunately the sound quality was not that great so a lot of you couldn't hear it
so i'm doing a redo and hopefully this time you my sound quality is much better and you're
able to understand what i'm saying so with that let's get started uh in this video i'm actually
going to talk about my educational background how i got introduced to tech and data science
and how i transition to becoming a self-taught data scientist while working at a large tech
company and what i'm currently doing at google so with that let's get started make sure to give
this video a thumbs up to help with the youtube algorithm and let me know in comments if you have
any questions or feedback so let's jump right into it in terms of my educational background so um
a little bit of information that you should know that i come from a non-tech background
i have a six-year gap between my college education and high school um i had to take that gap for
personal reasons family reasons i'll skip over that for now that's the topic for another video
uh but yeah so when i decided to go back to school i chose business as my major just to
give you a little bit more context nobody in my family growing up i am i wasn't exposed to
tech and nobody in my family worked in tech and nobody in my closer circle was
working in tech so i didn't know that people can actually work from their computers
so when i learned that it was fascinating that people can actually do that so um going back to
when i went back to school going back to when i went back to school yes going back to when i went
back to school i decided to choose business as my major i enrolled and got admission at university
of washington i actually went to north seattle community i started at a community college and
then i transferred to a four-year university and i got into business school and while in business
school i actually took a class in information systems um which exposed me to databases
data engineering databases management i got to work on a few data projects um in sql so for me
that class was eye-opening because as soon as i took that class i was i immediately know that
this is exactly what i wanted to do however i was too late in my major at that point and i
couldn't change my major to a more data focused major or a c computer science major so i ended
up conti i continued with my business um program but i ended up taking a lot of classes outside
while in school i started looking for internship and i wanted it to be more focused on data
job itself however i soon realized that there is um i couldn't find any internships that are
focused on more on data science or data analytics however i went to this one networking event
where amazon was present and i networked with somebody from the amazon team and they had this
internship opportunity that i hadn't considered before the internship was called financial analyst
internship i was talking to that person and that person was kind of like selling me the internship
and saying that this is like a good opportunity especially if you are focused on the data space
um however i was a little bit hesitant because i was i wanted to do more of like a data analytics
internship however that person ended up convincing me um so i gave him my resume and the next thing i
know is i got an interview call uh i ended up doing the interview and i got that internship
uh which ended up being eight months long um there were a lot of good and kind of um good
and not so good parts about the internship that i learned a lot um that internship was exactly
as the person described very data focused however there was a lot of repetitive tasks such as like
preparing reports uh weekly business review um and doing a lot of like i felt like i was doing
the same thing over and over again other than my internship project um however there were the good
parts of the internship was that i was working at a very large company such as amazon and my
network over there expanded very quickly so yeah i got to meet a lot with a lot of people in the data
engineering and data science science space while working at that internship and i built my network
enough that i was able to land interviews for data engineering and business intelligence positions
so eventually what i ended up doing i finished my internship i did really well on my internship
project out of all the 40 people who did the internship project my my project got the highest
score and it was very data focused at that point for those of you who use amazon you would know
there's a program called amazon smile so my project internship product was more focusing on
the the analytics of amazon smile program and how customer behaves uh how customer uh kind of are
retaining on the program itself so it was a very interesting project working on a very new program
um so it received a lot of good feedback from uh from people who were in the review committee ended
up doing very well the team wanted me back however i was very clear to the team and to my manager and
as well as my skip manager that the financial analysis financial analyst role is something
is not what i want to do full time and i'm more interested in a data data focus role so what i
ended up doing after finishing that internship i actually took a lot of courses outside of business
school more on the information system school i i took this one so there were three courses that i
did um which actually com nicely uh packaged into a certificate uh a data certificate um so that was
the certificate wasn't that helpful but the knowledge that i learned in that
certificate was super helpful because it kind of prepared me for a technical interview around
so remember i mentioned that i did a lot of networking while i was my at my internship
so i had a few interviews lined up for data engineering and business intelligence position
and after taking those courses that i did outside of business school they prepared me enough to be
able to pass that interview long story short i uh i got an offer to join join as a data engineer
another story which i will just skip just briefly mention is that the team
my team where i interned at uh they were only offering me financial analysts role
when i finished the internship however when they saw that i have offers from other teams for
data engineering role they actually uh changed their mind and they said like we will take you
we have this opening for a data engineer role how about you come back and join our team which
i ended up doing because i was very familiar with that i worked in that team for eight months and i
knew like if i were to join that team as a date engineer it will be a few fewer things for me to
learn versus if i were to go into a brand new team because i was pretty well versed in the data space
um how that teams data work what were their teams objectives and all of that
all right so i did that for i did data engineering for about two years i learned a lot on while
working as a data engineer i worked with um my the i have to say like the senior uh teammate
the senior data engineer on the team was one of the best mentors i could have asked for
he was um like he was very welcoming and if i had questions or i needed guidance or if i'm
stuck somewhere like i would go to him and ask him questions and we're still in touch it's been
about almost like 10 years now and um that person has been in my contact since then okay so i did
data engineering for two years i started feeling pretty comfortable in the space i felt like
i was i was building i think there were a couple of things that i felt i was lacking
um in the role one is that i was building data pipelines which is pretty cool right like um
working as such a big tech company and building data pipelines to understand how customers are
entering the site and what is their order journey looks like like building that path and that
pipeline um however one thing i realized that um every time i would work on something i would be in
the back end and i would feel like that my name kind of get missed but at times to present when
it's time to present i felt like my name would kind of be not part of the final piece that gets
um presented to business or products and things like that okay so yeah two years in i i did a
project while at the data general i decided i got this project that was more research focused and
that was a project where it uh kind of like gave me a flavor of more in the data science domain
and that's when i decided that i'm gonna switch teams and i'm gonna go for uh go into a more data
science focused team uh which i ended up i joined a team called web lab which was the a b testing
team eventually i found one team that was very open to having me as a data engineer
uh joined their team and there i got exposed to um the data scientists the resource scientists
that were working in that team for the next six months for me pretty much it was a lot
of rigor put into learning learning statistics learning um the the different languages uh such as
r and python um and then a lot of a lot of my learning was like i would learn from my
the work that my teammates would have done and if i have questions i would go to them and ask
questions and then other fundamental concepts i bought a bunch of books and then i would read
them and then get like a better grasp in terms of like statistics fundamentals so for any of you who
are trying to get into data science i would say start with statistics because that was that is
actually the fundamentals of like data science and as well as like machine learning and yeah
so yeah i did a lot of learning i would learn my teammates work eventually i got assigned on my own
projects um and i would learn outside of work and then i would come to work and then i would apply
those skills that i've learned on the job and complete those projects eventually i had built
the data science project portfolio that um enough projects that my manager decided that it's time
for me to transition officially in the system transition to a data scientist title so my manager
put together this case um and requested the hr to transition me so there was some pushback from the
from the hr where they were like she doesn't have a masters or she doesn't have a phd so we're not
going to uh we're not going to transition but my manager's comment to hr was if she's already doing
the work why do you care and i think that worked a lot he my manager did fight for me and i have to
give him a lot of credit because he didn't only do that he was actually a great teacher a great
mentor i remember a lot of our one-on-ones were would turn into like him teaching me a concept
whiteboarding something and then like teaching me and like uh simplifying things for me and then
uh helping me just like learn so i do get have to give him a lot of credit for uh everything that
he did for me from starting for for taking me in as a data engineer and then helping me build that
uh build my data science project portfolio and helping me learn along the way and then finally
uh working with hr and working and officially transitioning me into in the system which is
exactly what we agreed on before i joined the team so yeah i did that for about three years uh worked
as a data scientist uh worked on a lot of cool projects uh my team supported experimentation of
the entire amazon.com globally so i got to see i got to see a lot of cool things in terms of like
if there were like some changes being made on the side or if there are new features getting
added i would get to uh do a lot of like uh uh a lot of like statistical analysis to understand
if a customer if customers like a new feature or change in this feature or not if it's a launch or
no launch decision um hands down my favorite team so eventually i became um after like
doing it for a couple of years i became so well worse that i became the experimentation expert
where i would teach other people how to run good experiments um and eventually there was this
program called which basically uh called bar raisers so barristers uh basically are people
who are experimentation expert so i was one of the bar raiser for experimentation eventually i
became a trainer and i would train other people to become experts eventually those people would go
and then train other people so i had like grand kids uh grand trainees uh basically people who
have taught have taught further people to become experts in this domain um so it was yeah hands
down super rewarding experience really really enjoyed working my uh working in that domain
and i i i knew like that was the right decision for me to make that transition
because like i was really enjoying that work and i was getting great feedback my performance reviews
went up so everything like working working out for for my career-wise in terms of you must be
wondering like did having a data engineering background or a business background help me 100
having a business background really really helped because i knew how the businesses work
what how to speak in business language um and you would know like if you for any data scientist
having the domain knowledge having a good grasp on business because at the end of the day you're
doing the work to solve business problems so if you're working as a data scientist with a
good domain knowledge of the business you are going to do very well because you are going to
be solving for the right problems in terms of data engineering background yes that also helped quite
a bit because i was not dependent on other people to pull my data or if i had to like even build
like a scrappy data pipeline i was able to do it on my own that kind of like uh made my projects
run a little bit faster um so yeah it was overall i i feel like my path really it's not like i based
wasted any time i think that the work i did in data engineering space going to school in the
business domain was obviously has a big impact on my success um in my data science career i've
did the data scientist role for about three years um and eventually i decided to leave the company
and i'm currently working at google i've been here for about a year and a half i'm primarily
supporting the google search engine domain where basically when people are searching for things
i'm basically analyzing uh that data um so yeah it's been it's been uh super awesome
uh like from career standpoint from the the domain knowledge that i've gained in the field working in
e-commerce um and then working in a platform with on a platform such as a google search engine it's
just been an amazing transition um and yeah so with that thank you so much for watching
this video if you have any questions or any feedback or if you just want to hype me up like
feel free to leave a comment i would love that so i hope the sound quality was much better on this
video and thank you so much for watching and have a great day i'll see you in the next video bye