Twice weekly, I share proven strategies to help data scientists get noticed, promoted, and valued. No theory — just practical steps to transform your technical expertise into business impact and the freedom to call your own shots.
My PhD Didn't Prepare Me For This
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My first month in industry as a data scientist, I drafted a beautifully structured email for my boss. What he actually sent was 1/10th the length. I’ve never felt more overeducated and underprepared. Fresh from my PhD, my boss asked me to draft an email for him. I spent 4 hours crafting what I thought was the perfect message: grammatically perfect, clearly justified, with every logical step meticulously explained - exactly how I’d been trained to write at university. When he CC’d me on what he actually sent, I wanted to crawl under my desk. His version? “Hey mate, here’s the outcome we reached, cheers.” That’s when it hit me. I had spent years earning a PhD that supposedly made me “highly qualified,” yet I was completely unprepared for the reality of working in industry. My academic training had left me behind my colleagues in ways I hadn’t anticipated. More than a decade has passed since I left academia, and I’m pleased to say I survived. And over the years, I’ve come to realise my experience was far from unique. In the latest episode of Value Driven Data Science, I sit down with Dr Sayli Javadekar, who recently made the leap from a tenure-track academic position to working as a data scientist at Thoughtworks, to discuss the challenges she faced and the strategies that helped her navigate this difficult transition. You’ll discover:
This conversation won’t sugarcoat the transition from academia to industry, but it will show you how to navigate it. Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or click the link below: Episode 92: Making the Academia to Industry Leap in Data Science Talk again soon, Dr Genevieve Hayes p.s. I'm opening spots in my Strategic Expert Mentorship program starting in February 2026. This isn't a technical skills course. It's 1-on-1 mentorship for data professionals who want to make the move from technical executor to strategic expert. Between now and Christmas, I'm making time to talk with people who want to know more. Interested? 👉 Book Your Call Now |
Data Science Impact Algorithm
Twice weekly, I share proven strategies to help data scientists get noticed, promoted, and valued. No theory — just practical steps to transform your technical expertise into business impact and the freedom to call your own shots.
Last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for stronger AI regulation and a slower pace of AI development. Since then, two incidents have made his case for him. In the first, the US military almost started a war based on the contents of a confidently wrong AI-generated intelligence report. In the second, OpenAI disclosed that its agent hacked into Australia's Medicare website during training and accessed data that, although not sensitive, had yet to be publicly...
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