My Unorthodox Path To Data Science
From running Pub Crawls to running pipelines.
Picture me, 6 years ago, megaphone in one hand, drink tickets in the other, yelling into the megaphone at 300 people: LFG!
This was me, in Whistler, BC, having a blast with it and ‘living the dream’ as some of the pub crawl attendees would tell me. For a moment in time; it was a dream come true. However, after a year of selling tickets on the Whistler promenade and attempting to be the life of the party every Friday and Saturday night, I was wondering how this career would look a few years out. I didn’t have high hopes for how this career was going to age.
So I decided I wanted to work in tech and that I also wanted to ‘code’. This was the hot career of the time, and probably still is pretty appealing to be fair.
Working in tech was interesting to me as it was known for giving the employee a flexible life style, great pay, a fun culture, and if you got in with the right company at the right time, your career growth can be exponential.
Working in tech sounded sweet but unfortunately, aside from the fact that I couldn’t code, my resume sucked. With my resume head line of: Pub Crawl GM, and my subsections; Business School graduate and tree planter (tree planting is resume poison by the way), I could barely competitively apply for even the most entry level roles at the big tech companies of the time.
My resume had zero punching power beyond the other tens of thousands of business school graduates, and I needed to stand out. At the time apparently ‘coders’ were in demand at the best companies. I figured if I could be proficient in coding and bring my business background as well, I could probably achieve a decent lifestyle with remote flexibility at one of these desirable companies. This could also then allow me to stay in Whistler and evolve my life beyond limbo lines and tequila shots. Seemed like a ‘shot’ worth taking.
So, I quit my pub crawl and set out on a journey to become a ‘coder’.
Looking back, there was certainly a lot of luck involved, (maybe there always is), but I think the path which I took to learn coding, is not talked about enough as a viable strategy. I also think it may be one of the most effective and efficient paths as well. So read on further if you’re curious on a path into becoming a coder in the tech industry without doing years of school and dolling out $10,000+ in education fees.
Quickly before going on with the story, my next aspirational career dream is to be a Medium writer with 100 followers (lol) and it just so happens that you can help me! Take a second and give me a follow, like, and maybe even a comment at the end of the article if you feel like showing some love 💌
So my unconventional path to coding!
In a nutshell (or tl;dr) what I did was; I joined a really fast growing tech company at a role which I was qualified for and used their problems as my teaching material, their talented staff as my mentors, and their resources to help pay for the content I did need.
Who is this strategy for? Someone who has limited-to-no coding skills and is looking for a career change into the tech industry.
Is this strategy reproducible? Yes! There are still tons of fast growing tech companies who love to boast about employee development.
Could you do it today? 100%, with a huge under supply of talent in the market today there may have never been a better time to try this strategy as companies are even more incentivized to promote from within given that the external market is way too competitive and lacking.
Let me explain why this strategy is worth considering over other paths like going to university;
- Time is money; yo
- Getting paid while you learn > paying to learn
- Build your resume with relevant experience on your way there
- Most importantly; Try before you buy.
Time is money.
We don’t need to spend too much time here as this one is fairly obvious, but beyond the literal cost of going to school is the opportunity cost (which they will teach you about in Econ 101).
Going to school requires you to spend 4 years of gathering very limited real world experience. Thats 4 years you could be getting direct experience working in a company that will train you for the role you ultimately want.
Thats 4 years you could be using to go deep on a few skills rather than studying opportunity cost in Econ 101 when you’re trying to become a machine learning engineer.
Four years is a lot of time you could be using to build up your savings, getting real world experience and actually doing the work that you desire to be doing in the first place.
But the obvious problem here, is that who is going to hire you as a high school graduate or recent grad to be a Machine Learning Engineer.
Getting paid while you learn > paying to learn
Find a company who you want to work for in X role and get your foot in the door with any role they will take you for. For me, that was picking up calls and chats in Customer Service. For others, I have seen cooks at Shopify go from slicing and dicing to onions to slicing and dicing your code in a PR review. Pick the right company and get your foot in the door.
Once I had my foot in the door I didn’t start writing code or learning right away, BUT, I was making~40k a year (rather then spending ~10k a year), building a valuable understanding of Shopify’s business and making connections for the future dream of mine to make it into code based role.
Lucky for me, Shopify met the criteria of being a fast growing company who heavily invested in their employees.
Some huge advantages that become available to me in my early career at Shopify was, being encouraged to reach out to people in coding departments and ask for mentorships. More often-than-not these employees were more than willing to help ❤️.
On top of that, I was given a few hours a week to work on my self development in coding and they even provided a budget to buy materials to help me learn.
The must under rated benefit however, was that I was able to work and learn with code to build tools/projects that directly impacted my team. Therefore rather than working on coding problems about John’s 4 apples and Cindy’s 3 Orangutang’s, I was working and learning through coding problems that had a real world impact on my team, and on Shopify.
Build your resume with relevant experience on your way there
After one year at Shopify I found myself, with some pretty terrible coding skills, but some skills nonetheless. Along with my lacking python however, I had a ton of business context and product knowledge, as well as a few mentors who were rooting for me and we’re keen to help invest in my development.
Outside applicants would have certainly beat me on any technical test, but here’s the thing; the role I ultimately got moved into, was created for me. I didn’t have to compete against outside applicants.
I had a strong network who saw strong potential in me and I had deep business/product understanding that made up for my under delivery on technical skills. My resume was strong (at least in Shopify), and my experience was developing at an exponential rate. So after one year at Shopify, I was finally in a technical role.
Point here is; there are more opportunities and roles to apply to from within a company than from the outside.
Try before you buy.
What was amazing about this strategy was that I absolutely fell in love with coding and the problem solving I was doing every day. At this point being 28, I have had several friends do multiple degrees or spend years in school only to find out that they actually really do not like being an accountant or therapist, etc.
Instead of risking 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars on an idea and a hope, I was able to get paid to try out the career I had set my sights on. I discovered that I really did love it and because I was passionate about my work that really allowed me to continue to excel in my field.
In my opinion the biggest risk with school is that you spend 4 years learning about a field or job that you ultimately end up doing years later and come to learn that you actually really do not like it all that much.
That’s a lot of time, effort and energy being displaced in the wrong direction. It’s important to fail fast and fail forward, so actually sampling or getting a look into the role that you ultimately want to do as early as possible is a huge edge in being efficient with your time and energy.
So if I have you convinced that this is a path worth considering and you are wondering where to start, well, I have some good news for you.
You can copy exactly what I did, Shopify is still hiring today, still growing, and still invests heavily in their employees. Check out their job board here.
Want to find other companies beyond Shopify? Find a space that you are interested in, a fast growing company, and make sure their culture encourages employee development.
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