The Data Exchange Podcast: Jike Chong and Yue Cathy Chang on helping data scientists increase their impact in business and in society.
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This week our special correspondent and editor Jenn Webb and I speak with Jike Chong and Yue Cathy Chang, executives and seasoned leaders of data science teams. Our conversation is focused on their new book “How to Lead in Data Science”.
“How to Lead in Data Science” is an essential guide for data scientists at different stages in their careers whether they are individual leaders, or tech leads, or staff/principal/distinguished data scientists, or they are ready take on management leadership roles as managers, directors, or executives of data science. This episode is for data scientists who want to take their careers to the next level.
Jike Chong:
What I saw when I was working at LinkedIn, was that many data science teams at various companies were composed of fewer than 10 data scientists. And there just wasn’t the systematic process in the industry, to be able to quickly build a lot of leaders in data science. Through my conversations with my own team, and leaders in the field, Cathy and I started talking about how to put together this systematic process. Both of us are students of ancient Chinese philosophy as well, and we saw a lot of parallel. There is that Easter egg at the end of the book about how that connects to Eastern philosophy as well. But we found a lot of parallel in career development today, and career development from 2500 years ago. So all those converged together for us to put together this book, to really provide a more systematic approach. It’s not just like our own past experience, it’s really guided by our conversations with industry leaders.
Yue Cathy Chang:
It’s really goes back to the fundamentals. How do you grow as a data professional, so that you’re not only technically attractive and confident, but you’re also from a soft side, from the ethics, rigor and attitude perspective, growing as a professional. Because the fundamentals carry over across industries, and across roles that will benefit a person throughout life. It’s not just about a particular career change.
Errata: Today, there are over 150,000 data scientists around the world, as self-reported on LinkedIn. Jike mis-spoke it as “over 15,000 data scientists” in the podcast.
To purchase a copy of “How To Lead in Data Science”, use the 40% discount code podexchange20
Related content:
- A video version of this conversation is available on our YouTube channel.
- Sean Taylor: “Changes to the data science role and to data science tools”
- Solmaz Shahalizadeh: “Business at the speed of AI: Lessons from Shopify”
- Bahman Bahmani: “Business at the speed of AI: Lessons from Rakuten”
- Rumman Chowdury: “The State of Responsible AI”
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[Image: Half dome yosemite national park from Wikimedia.]
