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.
When Your World Changes in an Instant
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I was out of town for the weekend when it happened. Monday morning, I walked into the office like any other day. My colleague looked at me and said, “What did you think of the news?” “What news?” I replied. “Oh, we’re all moving to Geelong.” “Excuse me, what?” Over the weekend, the Victorian Premier had announced that my entire organisation was relocating from Melbourne CBD to regional Victoria - it was part of his election campaign. My job technically still existed, but keeping it meant completely uprooting my life - something that I wasn’t prepared to do. It felt like the floor had fallen out from under me. In an instant, I lost my entire sense of security about the future and just wanted my old life back. Sarah Burnett knows this feeling intimately. Sarah was made redundant from her senior role at a major global bank. But unlike the frantic scramble I subsequently went through to restore exactly what I’d lost, Sarah took a very different approach. She had the wisdom to pause, process, and ultimately transform her unexpected job loss into the launch of her own successful data consultancy. In the latest episode of Value Driven Data Science, Sarah joins me to share how she went from redundancy to co-founder of Dub Dub Data, including:
Sometimes the career move you never planned becomes the best decision you never made. Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or click the link below: Episode 88: Building a Data Science Career After Unexpected Job Loss 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.
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...
Imagine going to buy a house and the real estate agent just hands you a floorplan - without any photos or context. You’d see the number of bedrooms and bathrooms; the size of the house. All the important features. But would you buy it? Probably not. Because floorplans show features. People buy benefits. My parents’ neighbour recently moved house after 30+ years. For her new home, she chose a single-story house. The feature? No stairs. The benefit? Continued independence as she grows old - her...
When I was 9, I didn’t want to be a data scientist. I wanted to be a radio host. My favourite “game” involved recording episodes of my radio show using an old cassette recorder and blank audio tapes. I would bring on my family and stuffed animals for interviews, then cut to my favourite songs - sometimes sung (badly) by me. So, when I launched Value Driven Data Science three years ago, I saw it as a great way to learn from data scientists I admired, while living out my childhood dream. What I...