The real path to data science

This article is about my path to my first job in DS (data science). The path was long and covered in 2.5 years. To some, this figure may seem scary, and if I had known about it at the beginning, then I might have been scared away too. Some may call me an incompetent fool (and they will be partly right), but I hope for someone this article will help reduce the learning time and get through this path faster.

Acquaintance and first steps

This story begins in the fall of 2019. A young freshman Misha (that’s me) once again heard about some kind of data science. After a little googling, I learned about the course from a well-known search engine, where you can learn more about this area.

After passing the test piece, I liked this so-called data science and it was decided to continue studying this topic, but on my own, I was not ready to pay for it.

To begin with, I studied what DS should know in general and compared it with what I had in my head at that time. Realizing that there was nothing in my head (except for Pascal at school and 4 in mathematics at the university), I decided that it was worth starting with Python.

I found several courses on it and set to work. I took these courses for six months, and although, of course, there was progress, but not to say that it was very big, now I understand that this time would be enough to study the Python base well enough, but my approach when studying this course, as in the study of subsequent ones, was to say the least wrong: Get a week, I threw the course at 2, and so throughout the entire learning of Python.

At the very least, I learned this language for six months, and then the spring of 2020, and everyone’s favorite lockdown. I no longer need to go to the university, there was a little more time and I decided that it was time to end this Python and move on to the DS itself.

Getting Started with DS

On April 15, 2020, I opened the course “Introduction to Data Science and Machine Learning” and began to receive my first knowledge in this area. I liked the course, I can’t say that it was very easy for me, but there were no special problems, except for Kaggle, at that time it seemed a very incomprehensible thing.

My next course was a course from the largest DS-community in Russia. A very steep course, but I passed it, of course, not really deepening. I also took courses on statistics, SQL and other important things for DS.

First failed attempts

So another six months passed. I, thinking that I already know enough, began to actively look for the first job. I responded to various vacancies and I was invited for an interview at Megafon, they needed an intern. I was preparing and I was starting to get a little excited that I would soon get an internship, but the interview was unsuccessful. I didn’t manage to answer much, but I understood my true level.

Over the next six months, I took various courses, and also repeated the old ones, but studying them more carefully. Spring came, summer was approaching, in which I firmly decided to start working.

In April, I actively responded to vacancies, but to no avail. Nobody wanted to take a person without experience, who even had nothing to show properly. I didn’t have a git, I didn’t compete on kaggle, I didn’t have enough effort to make something more or less voluminous. Having a git with good code or having results on kaggle is very important to getting a job, especially a first one.

first chance

Summer has already come, and I still could not find a job. I have already started to respond to vacancies not related to IT, I wanted to find at least some work, but even here I did not succeed.

Of course, at that moment there were thoughts “maybe this is not for me?”, But at the end of June I was invited to interview for an internship at Megafon (yes, yes, he is again).

This time I prepared better for the interview, and I had more knowledge. As a result, I was accepted for an internship.

“I finally succeeded, now I am a full-fledged employee and one hundred percent will remain in the company after the internship,” I thought at that moment.

During the first half of the internship, we (there were 5 of us) studied various things related to the work of DS. We dealt with ML, Git, Oracle DB and similar things in detail. In the second half, they began to distribute us according to projects. I got on a project related to the recommendation of one of the tariffs. I have been trying to solve this problem for a month and a half. I got some result, but not very good. Then there was the final interview following the results of the internship, which I successfully failed. After that, I realized that I should have prepared better for it, but it was too late. Unfortunately, I had to leave my colleagues. I thought that now that I have experience, I will be able to get a job very soon. How wrong.

Victory

Although now they began to call me to social services, I could not successfully pass them, so I decided to change the approach to finding a job. I realized that in order to get the job I want, I need to be ready to work full-time 40 hours a week.

After numerous rejections, I managed to get another internship, and this time it was Norbit.

The internship in this company was organized quite well. Every day we had trainings conducted by the company’s employees, then there were homework assignments, as well as assignments for programming in Python. In addition, we could come up with and execute individual projects. I was invited to a project on an employee churn forecasting system.

By the end of the internship, I did not really believe in success, because. there were many candidates, and it was not known how many of us would be left. But as you can imagine, they took me anyway. I was very happy about it. The path of 2.5 years has finally been passed, but there is an even longer and more exciting path ahead.

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