This is part 3 from BT_Bear. You can find the other 2 parts here:
This is more art than science and I recommend taking a step back every six months and question if your path is taking you in the right direction.
Proof of value
I am a firm believer that value wins in the long run. But you will observe careers build without ever adding any. This can be frustrating, but consider the following:
Value is not necessarily the same for everybody. Technical people usually see value in technical qualities and often cutting-edge technology whereas people with a more commercial focus will certainly look at different metrics of success. These different definitions of value are the root for so many frustrations and many fail to recognize this. Re-factoring the code base so it is easier to maintain and build upon in the future? Sorry, but investors need to see new features every quarter – no time.
You may encounter situations where the top decision maker just wants to look great for his next promotion and does not care a bit if whatever he promises works two years down the road. I call this clown projects and may write more about it in the future. They can be fun.
Click here, if you want to know how to showcase the value you brought, on your resume.
You can complain all day long about the state of the world or learn to work with it. At least make sure that you understand what people you work with value and make sure this works for you.
If you want to level up your game, you will adapt how you work and communicate based on what is really valued by whoever signs your checks. Technical people often have a hard time with this. Opportunity!
What do these longer musings about value mean for a beginner? When considering any opportunity, I would try to really understand in the potential team delivered anything valuable in the last 12 months. Try to first understand what value could mean in the given industry. For consulting this would mean growth in billable hours in some form for a fraud department it may mean reduction in fraud volume. See if you get good answers with reference to anything that makes sense or just some fluff like “deployed 10 models”. When interviewing with a tech person anything in the ballpark of “improved our infrastructure” or “implemented new technologies that better fits our needs” without direct relation to business value can be a good sign, often means that the tech department has enough standing to focus some time on long term value even if it does not improve next quarters numbers. At least if the delivered business value is clear.
If you only take one thing, then always ask: is the goal clear? How is success measured? By which metric?
Leadership and peers
This should be kind of obvious but take a good hard look at them. Do you want to work with them? Will they inspire you?
I would add that your managers should display the understanding of business value and integrated solutions. This is not always possible, but a beginner should have the opportunity to understand a high-level view of the whole solution and where his piece fits in. If your role is the development of a model, you should get a briefing on how the model will be evaluated in the use case so you can optimize it based on this. Accuracy is not always the answer.
Here’s a nice vid that showcases different roles in the field of DS, from a biz side of things:
Challenge and support
Balance is what matters here. You want bigger and bigger challenges over time to grow, often problems you cannot solve when you start but figure it out as you go. The job of a manger is to make sure that it is possible to close the gap and that support is available when needed. This could mean training or a more senior person available to help.
“Growth opportunities” with zero support are a bad sign, those places will typically also have high staff turnover. Avoid.
The paths you may take
Consider where you want to be in 5 years, especially in the beginning. Not sure about it? That is fine, this can all be overwhelming. But work on this question. Things and job titles will change, but the rough directions are tech specialist, tech leader or sales. This is a bit of a additional dimension to the ML-specialisations mentioned in the last post. There are some strong opinions online, you can read up on the different directions to understand them better. Few grains of salt recommended. I would encourage you to test potentials paths. Volunteer to support sales or project management activities, dig yourself so deep into a tech topic that you become the go-to person.
Look at the overall team, a healthy place will have people at all stages of their careers on different paths. Get to know to know them, you will get a much better idea what the paths mean. To my experience people 5-10 years further down your road are ideal mentors. Trusts me, you want mentors.