Ideas to help you create projects that will wow future employers. — After plowing through a full Udemy course load, updating your LinkedIn certifications and finally understanding what C-T-E stands for, you will inevitably start searching for ways to display your work. It’s time to create a SQL project but, like many a high school project, you’re not sure where to begin. …

Save time, sanity and keystrokes with this low-tech strategy. — I would describe my coding style as aggressive. I slam keys when I type, I furiously click mice and, on occasion, I’ve been known to toss items from my desk. It’s a good thing I work from home. As a new engineer, I often got frustrated with my coding tasks…

3 work samples that got my foot in the door, and 1 that almost got me tossed out. — Analyzing My Data Science Portfolio Projects Like many graduates, I did not have a job lined up after earning my data science master’s degree; the reason is because I didn’t apply anywhere. For three months. I graduated in spring time but didn’t begin my job search, in earnest, until summer. Either fear or foresight compelled me…

And why we still might not hear from them. — The Battle for Remote Work — Ongoing or Over? Despite numerous viruses circulating and ongoing proxy wars around the globe, one of the most significant battles being waged in the fall of 2022 is over the end of remote work. Or the resolute continuation of WFH with workers continuing to exert newfound power in the job market. Or everyone…

How to prepare for crucial infrastructure conversations with your stakeholders, management and data consumers. — Data Presentations Aren’t Always About Data One day, months into my role as a data engineer, I experienced the software engineer equivalent of being called on, unprepared, during class. Leadership wanted me to explain the functionality and purpose of code that supported one of our data uptime alerting systems.

Why your data science MS isn’t as applicable as you thought. — You Can’t Learn Every Data Science Skill in School Nearly 3 years ago, when I began grad school, I had no idea what data science was. After almost 2 years learning the data science process, developing/training/testing ML models and fumbling my way through statistics classes, I hit a wall. Since I was in an online accelerated program that prided…

You spend hours writing your code but minutes displaying it. And, believe me, it shows. — The best thing I got out of my graduate data science program was advice to create a GitHub portfolio that was compelling, relevant and, above all, legible. As a working data engineer I sometimes get requests to review GitHub portfolios to offer advice or to refer one of my connections…

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to learn them. — Under-Taught Data Engineering Skills The biggest mistake you can make as a data professional in any role (data science, data analysis or data engineer) is thinking that you will learn everything by day one. The second-biggest mistake to make is thinking that just because you’ve learned recommended languages like Python or SQL or that…