Stay ConnectedI’m Daliana Liu, an ex-Amazon data scientist turned career coach and content creator with 300k followers on LinkedIn. I interview data science and AI practitioners on how they tackle practical problems and navigate career challenges. We cover both technical skills and soft skills. Each conversation is like having lunch with a mentor and friend.
I share more about my career adventure and the lessons I learned with 22k subscribers, join here: https://www.dalianaliu.blog/
Copyright: © Daliana Liu
Mark Freeman is a community health advocate turned data scientist His mission is to improve the well-being of people, especially among those marginalized. He is currently a senior data scientist at Humu where he builds data tools that drive behavior change to make work better. He has a master degree from the Stanford School of Medicine in clinical research, experimental design and statistics. He also has a certificate in entrepreneurship from the Business School of Stanford. In his free time, he volunteers with a Bay Area Community Health Advisory Council. He also plays Men's Division III Rugby. We talked about the building data tools, data engineering skills for data scientist, how to pitch a projects, and his career journey. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Mark's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mafreeman2/
Chapters:
(0:00) Intro
(00:03:05) Our experience using R - 1000 lines of code
(00:09:22) Entrepreneurship within a company
(00:16:25) DBT and modern data stack
(00:20:15) Tools don’t matter (in interviews)
(00:21:09) Things DE enjoys but DS doesn’t
(00:24:55) How to work with different stakeholders
(00:30:32) Common SQL mistakes
(00:33:34) SQL vs Python vs R
(00:35:26) T.R.I.B.E framework for projects
(00:40:43) Meet the stakeholders where they at
(00:42:40) Use feedback to get buy-in from collaborator
(00:46:36) How to pitch a new idea
(00:49:45) Don’t lead with solution, lead with the problem
(00:51:03) How to get buy-in from the leadership
(00:57:56) Present an idea as if the audience came up with it
(00:58:41) How to iterate a project
(01:00:27) How he almost lost 1 Million dollar for his company
(01:02:07) Things he learned from his manager
(01:04:19) Things that help people make changes effectively
(01:06:05) Things he learned from mentoring
(01:12:19) Mental Health and anxiety
(01:17:12) Web3
(01:20:14) Why he cares about community health
(01:25:40) "Soul - searching" on his future
(01:28:36) Why he write on LinkedIn
(01:30:04) Future of data science
Abhi Sharma started his career as a software engineer at Amazon Lab 126, building cloud services for Alexa. Later he transferred to Amazon Web Services as a deep learning architect. We used to work at the same team at machine learning solutions lab in AWS. Currently, he is a product manager, responsible for machine learning products like chatbot at Chime. We talked about how he transitioned his career from software engineer to deep learning architect and to a product manager, cool projects he worked on, and our shared experiences at Amazon. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Abhi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhivs/
Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(00:01:48) from SWE to deep learning architect to product manager
(00:12:44) day-to-day as a product manager at Chime
(00:19:46) how he collaborates with different data personas
(00:27:21) how to negotiate for more time for projects with leaders
(00:33:59) some timelines are negotiable
(00:38:00) most impactful project he worked on
(00:44:22) how to evaluate KPI, and not game the system
(00:48:02) think about development in the beginning
(00:50:29) data scientists need to educate the business and demystify the buzz words
(00:54:19) Amazon’s Think Big Challenge
(00:57:09) Never solve the problem twice
(01:00:25) How to transition to a product manager
(01:07:48) why he wanted to become a PM
(01:25:35) How can data scientist learn from PM
Mikiko Bazeley is a senior software engineer working on MLOps at Intuit. Previously, she worked as a growth hacker, data analyst in Finance, then become a data scientist, and later transitioned into machine learning. She has a bachelor degree in econ, biological anthropologie, did data science bootcamp at springboard. She is a tech writer for NVIDIA and she’s working on a course on MLOps. Her goal is to demystify MLOps & show how to develop high-quality ML products from scratch. You can find her content on Linkedin and YouTube. Today, we’ll talk about useful engineering principles for data scientists, MLOps, and her career journey. Subscribe to www.dalianaliu.com for more on data science and career. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Mikiko's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikikobazeley/
Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(00:02:00) from GPA2.6 to data scientist
(00:05:27) her experience at Mailchimp
(00:11:44) her frustrations on Cookiecutter project
(00:14:09) the pain point of a data scientist working with engineering
(00:21:01) 2 MLOps pattern
(00:25:52) challenges about her work
(00:29:49) the basic engineering skills a data scientist should have
(00:32:46) the tests a data scientist should write
(00:37:42) how an MLOps engineer collaborates with a data scientist
(00:45:28) what makes a good MLOps engineer
(00:52:33) AWS vs GCP vs Azure
(00:58:59) how a data scientist collaborates with an MLOps engineer
(01:05:19) suggestions for building a model on a large scale
(01:09:11) how she learnt MLOps on her own within 6 months
(01:17:32) learn from code review
(01:19:17) MLOps books and resources she recommended
(01:24:13) mistakes she made earlier in her career
(01:31:29) common mistakes people make during career change
(01:38:22) "Start with the end in mind"
(01:41:16) the future of MLOps
(01:46:23) how she sees her career growth
(01:56:40) how she continues learning new skills
(02:00:09) what she is excited about her career and life
Max Sklar is an independent engineer and researcher. Previously, he was an engineering and Innovation Labs Advisor at Foursquare after 7 years at the company as a machine learning engineer. Previously, he has worked on Ad Attribution, recommendation engine, ratings. He is the host of The Local Maximum podcast. Max studied CS from Yale, and holds a Master degree in information systems from New York university. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Max's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-sklar-b638464/
Max’s website: localmaxradio.com/about
Interviews he mentioned during the podcast:
Andrew Gelman, Statistics at Columbia University
Johnny Nelson on Free Speech and Moderation online
Stephanie Yang talking about Foursquare's Venue Rating System
Dennis Crowley: on Labs, on Innovation
Sophie Carr (Bayesian Mathematician)
Other Episodes Mentioned
Interview on Learn Bayesian Statistics
Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(00:01:23) from computer science to machine learning
(00:05:35) Bayesian methods in rating system
(00:14:53) how to choose a Bayesian prior
(00:20:10) how to deal with p-hacking
(00:26:57) causality model in ad attribution
(00:35:20) Bias-correction methods
(00:45:43) negative lift in advertising
(00:51:05) unexpected consumer behaviors
(00:52:08) why he decided not to climb the "engineer ladder"
(00:56:46) the challenges of having 5 managers in a year
(01:01:38) using the 3rd-party software vs building his own
(01:04:18) how he approaches ML problems
(01:07:51) his tech stack
(01:09:25) his advise on learning machine learning
(01:12:40) projects he is working on
(01:17:10) Bayesian for his life decisions
(01:22:00) how writing helps him
(01:23:48) the confusion, stress and excitement in his career
Damien Benveniste is a data scientist and software engineer. Previously, he was a machine learning tech leader and mentor. He has worked for almost ten years in different machine learning roles in different industries such as AdTech market research, e-commerce and health care. He has a Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University and now working towards co-founding own startup in employee engagement space. We talked about his career journey, how he solved challenging problems, and his advice for new data scientists and engineers. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Damien's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damienbenveniste/
(00:00) Intro
(00:01:17) from quantitative trading to machine learning
(00:07:52) his experience at Meta
(00:21:16) automated machine learning
(00:28:52) model paradigm
(00:32:47) the productivity-oriented culture at Meta
(00:41:42) short-term gain vs long-term goal
(00:44:38) things he liked at Meta
(00:51:54) the project that shaped his career
(01:03:56) the importance of having a baseline for ML models
(01:09:12) why he time-boxed everything
(01:16:25) test the model in production
(01:20:05)experimental design for ML
(01:23:25) the most challenging project he worked on
(01:37:07) best practices for machine learning
(01:48:44) how he sees himself
(02:00:52) lessons he learnt from being layoff
(02:06:45) frustration he had in his previous job
(02:16:14) what he is working on
(02:29:18) the future of machine learning
(02:39:52) things he is excited about
Sunishchal Dev is a lead data scientist at Booster. He's helping to decarbonize the transportation industry by optimizing last mile delivery of renewable fuels. Previously, he was a management consultant. On the side, he volunteers with Project Drawdown to model the most effective solutions to climate change. He is also a mentor of future data scientist as a springboard by guiding them through real world projects. We talked about his career journey, supply chain optimization, how data science can help the environment. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
(0:00) Intro
(00:01:24) from business to data science
(00:06:36) the big impact of a small improvement
(00:08:50) data engineering vs predictive modeling
(00:11:48) routing optimization
(00:16:27) time series model
(00:21:32) use upsampling to simulate intermittent time series problem
(00:26:20) his modern data stack
(00:28:29) collaborate with engineers
(00:30:06) common mistakes people made in building time series model
(00:37:02) collaborate with truck drivers
(00:40:17) how to become a good communicator
(00:46:30) his experience in mentoring data scientist
(00:51:14) things people cannot learn at school
(00:53:16) the mistakes he made and the things he learnt from his mentor
(00:56:07) how data science can help the environment
Books recommended:
The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion
Felicia Rutberg is a product strategy and analytics manager at Snap, previously she was a product data scientist at Spotify. She started her career as a management consultant at Accenture. She studied mathematics and cognitive psychology at the Vanderbilt University. Felicia reached out to me on Linkedin because she wanted to share how she became a data scientist while having ADHD. Today we’ll talk about product analytics at Spotify and Snap, her career journey, and ADHD. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Felicia's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciarutberg/
Highlights:
(00:01:29) from management consulting to data science
(00:12:20) financial data analyst at Spotify
(00:20:06) how to do internal job transition
(00:25:57) product data scientist at Spotify in the econometrics team
(00:29:33) how she became more vocal on the creative process
(00:33:48) how to get the last 1% of the work done
(00:38:53) how to ensure the quality of the analysis
(00:50:19) propensity score matching at Spotify
(00:57:09) how to validate causal inference outcomes
(01:00:51) lessons from working with economists
(01:19:16) from Spotify to Snap
(01:27:35) salary negotiation
(01:34:02) day-to-day at Snap
(01:38:33) Spotify vs Snap
(01:44:35) lessons from management consulting that helped her data science journey
(01:47:37) ADHD and self-compassion
(02:02:52) the books she recommended
(02:08:26) her future career
Emma Ding is a data scientist turned career coach. Previously she was a data scientist and software engineer at airbnb. I first discovered her through a viral Medium blog called “how I got 4 data science offers and doubled my income 2 months after being laid off". Today, her mission is to help data scientists land their dream offers by being strategic and efficient in their interview preparation at https://www.datainterviewpro.com/. Among the 80 clients she worked with, 90% of them received data scientist job offers from top tech companies, such as meta, linkedin, doordash, robinhood, etc. We talked about how she doubled her salary and got into Airbnb after she was laid off , her experience at Airbnb during the first half of the podcast, and then we’ll dive into new trends in data science interviews and her best strategy to get a data scientist job. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Emma's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/
DataInterviewPro Free product case class: https://www.datainterviewpro.com/product-case-masterclass-registration
Books on causal inference: Mostly harmless econometrics and Mastering Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect.
Emma's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmading001/
(00:00) Intro
(00:04:24) her strategy to get the data scientist offer after the layoff
(00:07:00) advices for preparing interviews
(00:14:04) her day-to-day at Airbnb
(00:16:46) things she learnt from her mentor
(00:18:07) from a data scientist to a SDE to a data interview pro
(00:22:12) trends of data science interview
(00:26:48) data scientist tracks: analytics-driven vs algorithms-driven
(00:32:56) SQL interviews: readability and proficiency
(00:35:06) make a study plan, execute it and keep the confidence
(00:41:29) what she teaches in her datainterview.com
(00:43:45) how to tackle take-home challenges
(00:45:41) how to negotiate salaries
(00:46:56) how to build confidence in the job search process
(00:50:23) how to study efficiently different subjects
(00:54:26) how to transition to data science
(01:00:05) how to remedy mistakes during the interview
(01:03:37) is data scientist still in demand?
(01:08:43) advices for getting ready for the new career
Carly Taylor is a senior manager at Activision, leading a team of machine learning engineers to tackle disruptive behaviors in the game ‘Call of Duty’. Previously, she has held various roles including machine learning engineer, data scientist, product analyst, Analytical Chemist. She has a master degree in computational chemistry from the university of colorado. She’s passionate about video games and cyber security. She shares her insights on machine learning, gaming, and career with 33k Linkedin follower. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
Carly's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-taylor0017/
Highlights:
(00:00) Intro
(00:01:14) from chemistry major to data scientist in gaming
(00:05:46) how she tackles disruptive behavior using machine learning
(00:11:38) feature engineering and model drift in fraud detection
(00:16:49) the challenge of dealing with the large scale of data
(00:27:10) data science in the Metaverse
(00:36:08) signal processing and anomaly detection
(00:40:31) dealing with the outliers
(00:45:49) gets the buy-ins from the leadership
(00:49:56) from an IC to a manager
(00:53:36) mentorship, mistakes, and other things she learnt from work
(00:58:48) Python or R?
(01:05:30) how she sees herself grow and how she deals with struggles
(01:07:56) the future of data science in gaming
Pauline Chow is a data scientist and former legal attorney and active transportation advocate. She worked in banking, fashion and education start-ups, and Amazon. Currently, she is the data engineering lead for Thrackle, a blockchain research and modeling company. She has a master degree in computer science, Machine learning, from Georgia Institute of Technology, she also has a law degree JD from the university of wisconsin. She is also a certified yoga teacher and published writer.
We talked about her projects in three different teams in Amazon: devices, HR, and real estate; how her law degree helped her become a better data scientist; how she 're-invented' herself. If you like the show subscribe to the channel and give us a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com/ for more on data science.
Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/
Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu
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