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.
Tom and Adam
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As a lifelong movie fan, the two stars whose careers stand out as being the most impressive to me are Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler. Hear me out. Cruise built a career based on unrelenting excellence. The Mission Impossible movies are pretty darn impressive and that didn't happen by mistake. By focusing on making movies of undeniable quality, he was able to make his work speak louder than his personality. Sandler, on the other hand, is in many ways the anti-Cruise. Yes, Billy Madison is brilliant, but Jack and Jill leaves a lot to be desired. But that's OK. Because his brand isn't about undeniable quality. It's about his personality. Sandler makes movies that are fun to watch and enjoyable to make, with people he's worked with for years. Audiences watch them and top actors work with him because of the goodwill he's built, even if the quality varies wildly. For years, I believed that to succeed in data science you had to choose one model or the other. You could focus on building Cruise-like quality or Sandler-style goodwill, but you couldn't optimise for both. Yet, revisiting this model in the age of AI has made me realise that optimising for both is exactly what data scientists need to do. Expertise and relationships are the two areas where AI can't compete. AI can produce competent work at scale, but competent isn't excellent. So, Cruise-like excellence is now one of the few remaining differentiators - and worth pursuing now more than ever. Yet, excellence alone is no longer enough. If no one knows your work is excellent, it doesn't matter. And in a world that's now flooded with AI-generated content, standing out also requires genuine, Sandler-style human connection. For data scientists, this means knowing your stakeholders, understanding their needs and linking your work back to what they really care about. In the age of AI, the data scientists who thrive won't be the ones who choose between Cruise or Sandler. They'll be the ones who figure out how to be both. Talk again soon, Dr Genevieve Hayes |
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.
The number one piece of advice I give to data professionals is to have more conversations. Conversations lead to good things. Things like job offers and stronger relationships. But more importantly, the opportunity to deepen your knowledge through learning from the wisdom of others. I owe many of the best opportunities I’ve encountered in my career to proactively seeking them out wherever I can. My podcast is a weekly example of the power of conversation. But if there’s one thing all these...
While working as a data scientist in a large organisation, I was once called on to attend a meeting with representatives of a big tech company and multiple senior leaders from my business area. The tech reps were there to sell us a new product. The data scientists had been invited because we were the intended users. Although there were a dozen or more people in the room, I was the only person who came prepared with any questions - 2 1/2 pages of them, to be precise. I let everyone else have...
Like many readers of this newsletter, I identify as a data expert. It took me years of study and hard work to build this expertise, and it’s something that I’m not willing to lose. This is not just because of everything it took to get here, but because my expertise forms an integral part of my identity. And the idea of losing it feels, in many ways, akin to losing a part of who I am. So, when I recently started hearing from data professionals who spoke of slowly losing skills as they...