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.
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...