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I'm wrapping up my PhD this month and applying for jobs. Mostly Data Science jobs. I've got a variety of past experience in things such as spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, etc, that don't quite make sense to generic healthcare company data scientist #69. Should I peel all irrelevant skills like that off of my resume? I have a more recent LaTeX formatted resume that I submit in PDF form. I was wondering why I was only getting callbacks from smaller companies, looked into it, and whatever machine reading tech larger companies use spits back incomprehensible garbage, which may explain my unfortunate callback rate. So I'm updating an old resume from a couple of years ago.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:04
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qhat posted:Out of curiosity because someone mentioned it earlier, I looked at what a machine learning PhD gets funded at UBC Vancouver. The answer is 24k Canadian dollars a year. Lol. I knew PhD was basically slave labour, but dang that's feudal. I have a better idea though, send out h1b applications to the bay area every year for 5 years and eventually get a job that pays hundreds of thousands. Lots of midwestern universities top out at about 20-22k USD. I have a ~prestigious nasa fellowship~ and make 24k. For about 7 more days. That salary review for San Fransisco is interesting... I'll soon have my PhD and definitely the background. Anyone recommend a way to get a salary investigation more comprehensive than glassdoor and the like for any given area?
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Jan 23, 2018 15:52
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Emacs Headroom posted:have you done any internships yet? No. I'm in a really weird spot. Between economic and family situation and my original desires (NASA Postdoctoral Program, UCAR/NCAR Postdoctoral thing, some national labs positions) are at odds with said situation. There is a time limit from the moment you receive your PhD to apply for some of these postdocs, so I was hoping to work in industry for 1-2 years and give it a go, as a compromise. Do you have any recommendations for internships? Why do you ask?
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Jan 23, 2018 17:14
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Emacs Headroom posted:It's tougher to break in these days I think, with a large number of specialized ML PhDs coming on the scene (and Deep Mind / Google Brain / FAIR can't hire all of them). My background is actually in condensed matter experiment, more formally. Through my physics masters I worked on carbon nanostructures and more 'soft matter' stuff involving fluids at the nanoscale. Lots of spectroscopy. I did a lot of simulations too with the theory group and that eventually led me, in a weird way, to getting my PhD in the electrical engineering department where my dissertation topic has to do with clustering, classifying, and ultimately predicting performance changes in human physiology using mostly time-series signals, like EMG. It turns out this blend is great for studying aerosols and I have a proposal and a contact for a NASA postdoc, but the posting was pulled due to funding concerns last year. So that's on hold or out of the picture depending on how pessimistic I am at the moment. I had things lined up already and was too busy to adjust my strategy, so here I am. I'll talk to some people about internships. Most seem to require that I be in pursuit of my PhD, which is true on paper until May. One of my committee members is one of the 80s neural network guys with strong connections, so I'll talk to them too. People in my program tend to end up at Facebook or Apple it seems, but I'm also not quite strictly ML or CV like them. Thanks for the advice
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Jan 23, 2018 19:15
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I've had to pass up many internships that would mesh well with my work and my desired career path(s) because they were unpaid. There was some really neat postings for the UN a few years ago but they were entirely unpaid and would require relocation to loving NYC. Most of my ideal jobs seem to be the purview of the rich.
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Jan 27, 2018 23:10
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I probably should have gone to a better school but ultimately chose to better my economic position in concert with my family and stay with my partner, eventually getting married. Honestly, now having seen and worked in all these various environments ("elite" and otherwise), I'm convinced I made the right choice. My program is competitive with these others on a technical level, if not on a prestige level, and I've built strong social and support networks. I simply wouldn't have had the material access to support the same level of competitiveness. I may still be able to weasel my way into the life I've wanted, but as I grow older I'm better able to recognize the fact that my class background was the fundamental deficit in that sense.
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Jan 28, 2018 02:06
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Emacs Headroom posted:I like to set up a process that for junior people goes: I'm getting a PhD involving this stuff (though not necessarily explicitly concerned with it) and I don't know what any of this means. Not a criticism, I just honestly don't know what to make of this. I suspect there is a lot of commonality in my background, but these particular terms are super discouraging. Before writing this I googled reservoir sampling and recognize it (without any particular name) from my undergraduate studies, but man, if you interviewed me yesterday I would have no clue what you are talking about.
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Jan 29, 2018 04:13
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If a large multinational company has a position listed for a location in a nearby city, but also a large presence in my city, is it worth asking if it is possible to work the same position instead at my city? Probably gonna ask anyway but I'd like to hear thoughts on the matter.
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Feb 7, 2018 18:02
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good point.
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Feb 7, 2018 19:49
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Is it worth it to get certifications while I'm still technically student? Also I had my first phone interview today and it went well. Meeting in person in two weeks. Stoked to not be a poor. First question right off the bat was "is this job going to bore you?". Nah man, I'm actually curious about stuff.
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Feb 13, 2018 22:19
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Like machine learning and such. Not sure where that would fit in. SQL stuff too I guess since I see it listed somewhat frequently in CVs.
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Feb 13, 2018 22:28
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re: startup chat I have a skillset that apparently makes me attractive to a lot of nanotech and bioengineering startups. I worked at one such company with people I knew and was close to near the end of my undergrad and hooo boy capitalism is a gently caress. Even worse, it's someone else's get-rich-quick scheme. The idea was shaky at best and, despite suspecting this, I still pursued it for garbage wages and research experience. It yielded a "presented to non-technical audiences including C-level executives" line on my resume. I mean they had PhDs but they were clearly worthless in this new context. I learned a lot about dealing with people and sniffing out bullshit that year. I also learned that my pessimism was a reflection of reality -- 95% + companies talking about graphene, nanotubes, nano needles, are bullshit vaporware that will never come to fruition. My startup checklist: only if it's mine and a form of early retirement.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:07
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Im going to change my name to cranky and cynical.
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Feb 22, 2018 19:41
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qhat posted:Latex is great and all but holy loving dogshit tabular and its variants are huge pieces of poo poo. You can spend as much time formatting tables as it takes to write the rest of the loving resume. I found a moderncv variant that works great. Still use word because it seems to be more compatible with OCR poo poo. edit: for like job jobs where people are unlikely to read a loving thing that is. Academic poo poo gets the nice one.
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Mar 3, 2018 15:49
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Oh yeah, I had my first in-person interview yesterday. Two weeks ago we had a phone interview, seemed like a technical screening process. In-person interview was about two hours long. He gave me a tour of both buildings, explained the company structure, etc. I asked a bunch of the questions posted in the OP to, what seemed like, great effect. He described the benefits package and asked me if that salary range was ok (75k-90k was explicitly stated in the job advertisement). I said yes. For context, this is a low cost-of-living city in the midwest and I could completely wipe out our debt (wife's student loans) within a year at the high range, slightly longer at the low range. Some background: I applied to this job because I'm wrapping up my PhD and my postdoc fell through. Now I just kinda wanna be rich. Been broke forever. After talking with the guy this actually seems like a really good job coming out of academia. Job title is 'data analyst' and involves building a lot of predictive and statistical models, which is what I did with my PhD. They are an insurance recovery operation that analyzes claims, and only recently got started in the analytics space. It seems they aren't totally sure what they are looking for, given the job description. B.S. required, excel background desired (lol), analyst title -- actual job is much different than what the advertisement conveyed. I'd basically have the freedom to develop my own approach. He made clear many times that there's tons of room for growth and space for innovation. He's also concerned that the job won't hold my interest, which I took every opportunity to show interest vis-a-vis innovation in a new domain and the aforementioned flexibility. He asked me the whole 'where you see yourself in 5 years' deal, which in the context is a good question. I gave a diplomatic but certain answer that connected with what the job opportunity was offering in terms of developing mastery, etc. I feel real good about it though. He said he would give me a phone call, and if I understood correctly, that's a phone call with a compensation number. Can't tell if I have the job or not, and I don't have an offer in hand directly, so... YOSPOS, stabilize my emotions. I didn't specify a number within that range, but I did say 'given the doctorate and background, I do prefer something at the higher end of the range' and he said of course!. So... dunno if I hosed that one up or not.
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Mar 3, 2018 16:07
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my commute is about to go from 8 minutes to 20 minutes and it's rocking my world. ughhhhh
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Mar 4, 2018 18:21
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Valeyard posted:i might be interviewing at a startup soon Do they use the phrases 'rock star' or 'wizard' in their hiring language? If so, flee.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:21
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I've been applying to data scientist positions at a big company here locally for 6 months without any responses. They just keep re-posting the advertisements, and adding more even. People have recommended it as a place to work for years. Now those same people are recommending against it. I just got hired at a company because of my credentials and domain expertise, but I know jack poo poo about the business itself. I'm getting the sense that they know what they are doing. Sure hope so -- first job out of academia.
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Mar 9, 2018 17:36
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From this chat I feel like my physics and math education was more instructive in programming. Albeit scientific computing, not whatever real people do.
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Mar 10, 2018 16:01
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Pollyanna posted:howso? legit question, not being an rear end Speaking strictly in the scientific computing domain, my program had a number of options. I double majored in math and physics. There were routes you could take where you barely used a computer. I specialized in condensed matter physics but joined a lab early on and did a lot of computational simulations for carbon nanostructures including graphene, and other (at the time) hypothetical 2d materials. Before that, or around the same time, I took two classes that hurled me into a depression: computational physics and numerical analysis. I had no real programming experience, or classes, before that. The computational physics one had me reproducing work in atomic physics using fortran of all things (actually a good language imo, for its purpose, and for learning), while the numerical analysis used computational fluid dynamics problems, using C, as its mode of teaching. The point is that all the core concepts in a subject like (I guess?) data structures and algorithms are always on ones mind. As is memory management and computational complexity. Like, I need to know if this thing is going to take something on the order of minutes, hours, or millenia to calculate. I sometimes would get lazy and just assume things would work out. I'd come back a day later and the thing is still running. I would estimate the number of operations for each step and get something on the order of 10^20 seconds. Thats a bit of time. Getting the job done at all was a huge task and a great, but frustrating way of learning. It felt good to later on produce a beautiful animated visualization of flows. They just kinda expected you to figure it out, and I'm sure I've got some bad, fossilized habits (that's why I lurk some of these programming threads here -- to get rid of them), but just doing a thing and loving it up and staying up all night and day drinking coffee works. Math department had some discrete mathematics courses which helped me immensely in understanding how to think about computer operations. I took an intro to programming class in the CS department, in C, later in my undergrad, and it helped me better structure my code and understand things like case switching, that I hadn't really used. But otherwise it was very basic and not challenging. I assume higher level courses would have been, and many of my peers have come out of that program fairly proficient, in my estimation. But the best ones always had a ton of side projects. I've got a lot of experience in related areas, which when synthesized, might actually approximate the subject matter of a CS degree. But I've never studied it formally, which is something I think hurts me. I've got books and internet though. It's a sore spot for me in many ways. I couldn't make you a GUI to save my life. I've never used Java, C#, or .Net. I love python now because all the stuff that was obnoxious to think about in C is just kinda there. I would still use FORTRAN over anything for a particular, but very limited, class of problems. But I struggle thinking about Python in the way one builds a backend in Django or Flask. It's just high level methods to me and I prefer to work close to the metal, so to speak. I'm uncomfortable when I don't understand how things work at least at some lower level, so I don't do well with that sort of thing anyway. I will never be a software engineer, but I can write you a fizzbuzz. I can write some fibonacci poo poo. But I prefer to do it on paper first, think about how cool it is, then do the programming thing. I also have a lot of experience interfacing a bunch of devices using LabVIEW, which has it's own contribution to thinking about data flows and such. I was basically actually interested in all the work described here. Judging by the chat, that alone goes a long way. I don't think I could study programming for programming's sake. It has to be a means to an end. Although as I worked my way through grad school I found myself becoming more and more interested in computing as a topic of it's own. Incidentally, in my job search, I've had only two callbacks and one interview, which I thankfully got. I start in a week and I'm nervous as hell someone will find out how lovely a programmer I am. edit: this is a lot of text that just says that building stuff matters I guess. Kudaros fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 18:31
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Looking at my soon-to-be income and cost of living comparison calculators, housing seems to be the most major factor in encouraging me to just stay in my small city. There's little in the way of mass transit, but I live in an incredibly walkable neighborhood. My commute is about to nearly double form 8 minutes to 14 minutes, which actually legit has me down. I hate driving to work. I could live in Chicago though. Now that I think about it, door-to-door commute would be about the same since university parking be the way it do. Not gonna bike to this new job ever though and that's depressing. I want to move just to, y'know, move, but the economic downsides are significant.
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Mar 12, 2018 17:54
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I finished my first week at my new job. Compared to grad school I feel way more sure of myself, more competent, etc. I realize it's the first week but I feel like the popular saying of "they expect results in industry" is exactly backwards. I also had some pretty aggressive advisers though. It's weird to come home and not think about work in a way that stresses me out. I still can't stop thinking about work, but I'm not dreading it. People skills and the technical skill to back it up go a long way in this environment. 80% of data science in this role is making c-levels feel safe and comfortable. They gave me my own office which is nice too. And I don't really worry about money anymore. It's a surreal experience going from crackhouse to office. I was not prepared for two things however: many these people have the straightest, cleanest, whitest teeth I've ever seen in my life, and they actually engage in small talk like "got any big plans this weekend?" I thought that was just a joke about office culture.
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Mar 25, 2018 16:43
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I still find myself wanting to study different subjects though. I think the only life that is possible in is full communism or independent wealth. Academia will give neither. At least my job is a pretty natural extension of the work done under my phd.
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Mar 27, 2018 13:10
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Its crazy how cost of living just doesnt scale. What kind of data scientist roles pay 300k in San Francisco?
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May 11, 2018 04:31
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Also from those who have interviewed in the past: assuming it matters, what kind of personal website is efficient? I've seen some very nice, small sites that simply link out to github, linkedin etc. Also personal blogs overfllowing with posts on various matters or larger projects. Any thoughts? I'm lazy if it matters.
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May 11, 2018 04:39
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I already got the PhD, which is ML relevant. I've got my eye on waiting around for a tenure track at my preferred university or my backup plan of retiring at ~45 or less. There's also some national labs with positions that use ML as a tool for difficult problems I'm interested in. I am employed now though. I have not seen very many jobs with that kind of salary on offer up front. I'd like to move somewhere for a little while and come back but between this high salary, low cost of living, and strong social support network its real tough to justify. The sense I get is that any move to NYC or SF would be a severe loss in income. Or to Gitlab and buffer anywhere (lol). Maybe I just don't know the right people or how to look. Are glassdoor estimates *that* much of a lowball?
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May 11, 2018 15:39
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I'm coming up on my 1 year at my first job out of grad school. I took a different job title and negotiated it into a data science position, though I don't have the title (I'm "senior data analyst"). I was a bit uneasy transitioning from the PhD into industry, but now I feel way more confident. I'm still learning things too, which is the most important thing to me at this particular juncture. I also feel underpaid. Going from stipend to 90k base salary without having to move was great at first. Its definitely adequate, and I don't mean to sound greedy, but I don't like the idea of leaving money on the table. I've since read the 2018 DS Burtchworks study, and saw an IEEE salary publication, and I feel like I could be making more (~110 to 140k for midwest). My manager wants me to lead and develop the analytics team, but I'm beginning to feel like this is unlikely to happen at this point. I'd be interested in actually developing teams like that, but this environment is ancient in terms of both tech and people. I've found many of the managers hesitant to make any real changes. Much of their work isn't setup in a way that is conducive to any sort of nice analytics approach. Data is a mess, people don't know where much of it even is, and so on. On the other hand they gave me my own office. They are apparently stingy about that so I initially took it as a good sign. The office had been vacant for years, and the one next to mine still is. In my review my manager said he wanted me to have a quicker turnaround, get to failure faster, etc. After two weeks of working on this particular project I had strong confidence that it would never work out, and was foolhardy. But he's the one constantly asking me to "see what if". So that's been awkward. I asked him about a job title change as a way of eluding to a future conversation about compensation and he said he'd look into it. Otherwise we have a good relationship. I'm waiting to see what salary adjustments come in next, but in the meantime I'm looking at my options. For the time being, I'm geographically locked. I recently received an invitation to speak with some C level people at another midwestern company that does work that I think may be more interesting. I'm going to see whats up at least to build some network (I have little in industry as I originally intended to go the postdoc route). Any thoughts? I read that Chapman salary negotiating book recommended in this thread and started kicking myself over the first interview. The salary range was "fixed" and he gave me the maximum, but looking back I bet I could have squeezed a sign on bonus or more vacation out of the deal.
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Mar 3, 2019 18:18
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I hate to ask what may be a simplistic question, but is there like a glossary of terms describing the various roles and components of an IT 'department' of an organization? I went from academia to data science in industry and I'm getting a feel for many of the relevant bits, but then I look at job listings at, e.g., Splunk, and I get the sense that simply understanding this might make me better at developing my current role.
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Mar 5, 2019 05:03
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Can you all remind me how recruiters work? Im not paying them so whats in it for them? A friend of mine works in such a department, knows im looking, and got me in touch with a coworker of his. This recruitment firm appears to be fairly knowledgable and well connected, collecting info ahead of a few job postings that seem - on the face of it - to be a good match. The most recent email she sent has an agreement mentioning, among other things, that my minimum salary requirement is $X, an approximately true amount (I guess?) What are some traits of good and bad recruiters? Or do only bad recruiters exist? Seems like mostly negatives if I'm to believe what I read on these here forums. This will be my second job post-phd so I'm trying not to gently caress myself and make money as quickly as possible. Gotta get that grad school poverty behind me.
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Apr 26, 2019 23:00
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This is my second round of applying to jobs after grad school (bit over a year since landing my first job) and it's been interesting. I'm interested in either moving abroad and working on reasonably cool things , or making tons of money as quickly as possible. Applying for data science or ml research ish positions. Procter and gamble has an initial assessment of the kind I've never seen before that appears to to amount to "how much of a snitch are you?" and it has "no wrong answers" (it definitely has wrong answers). It's strange to me that for positions like that they wouldn't want to at least talk about my projects, my phd, or whatever. But reading this thread over the years has taught me that I don't even want most jobs, and applying while having a decent job is a liberating experience. Also any experiences on getting a job as an American in western Europe? I'm mostly applying to some rather niche jobs with particular skillsets but also applied to some just for the hell of it. Seems like I'm less likely overall to get responses. Not sure if the experiences of, say, H1B jobs here maps well the other way around.
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May 5, 2019 16:52
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I got hired as a senior data analyst about 18 months ago and I'm doing senior data scientist level work (at least -- including training others, conceiving strategy, building and deploying models, persuading senior management, etc.) I've asked about title change in the past but then we got bought out by a much larger company. That integration process is still ongoing. I'm looking at the 2019 Burtch works report, my original job posting, what I do now, and my PhD, and I'm thinking its time to push or leave. My salary isn't horrible but it's definitely not up to par. Any thoughts on asking during integration? This company is much, much larger than ours fwiw.
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Sep 26, 2019 13:43
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My line of thought regarding titles was that it might make me more competitive for future job applications. The company that bought ours had its eye on many things, but specifically the value stream that I'm in. I'm the sole person conceiving of AI strategy and actually developing it through to production. Now I'm just concerned about timing. Wait until full integration (middle of next year) or just ask now? I'll be debt free soon in any case, but if I'm working a job I'm absolutely not interested in, may as well take as much as possible.
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Sep 27, 2019 13:36
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The Management posted:the time to attack this is immediately. if you’re a central person in the value of this merger, the company is most vulnerable now and they need stability to close the merger smoothly. they may also be asking you to sign a new employment contract with the new company. there is no way you’ll get anything out of a bigger company after a merger. I appreciate it. My finances are good and the alternative (to continue working same title and pay) is unacceptable, given the multitude of options that exist. So I think I'll just press this issue. Diplomatically of course.
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Sep 30, 2019 22:51
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:titles are important for marketing but it is almost never worth fighting your employer over a title change unless your responsibilities are changing, or have already changed In my case it was that they saw my resume for a job posting I was clearly over qualified for, and said "what if we did this instead". I didn't negotiate any further because I wasn't in the position to. My postdoc funding fell through and I was otherwise unprepared post-phd. So my job title and description are wildly off the mark. Description: I dunno, some ad-hoc sql queries to support whatever initiatives we have. Advanced excel skills a must (actually in the posting). Reality: I'm the initiator conceiving of fancy algorithms and putting them into production, while developing beautiful visualizations and arguing my case to executives. I have no knowledge of excel. Metrics are on track with my estimations of ~2mil in savings over an 18 month period. Big deal for the size of the company (prior to acquisition). I still think that its just easier to negotiate with a new job. My boss brought up the title change the first week I was there. Having now pressed him on it twice (lightly) and seen the months go by... yeah.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:42
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I have a 5-person panel behavioral interview next week for a research-oriented industry position. Ugh.
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Oct 17, 2019 13:34
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Private Speech posted:the one time I was on one of those the guy was in my opinion perfectly fine but got turned down for "appearing desperate" lol. Two years ago this might have been me. Now though, even if this job is ostensibly right up my alley and interesting and gets me away from health insurance nonsense... I think I'll be good on this front. Feels good. Still gotta navigate the whole "promotion/raise/title change -before-acquisition" deal, but I'll see how this plays out first.
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Oct 17, 2019 23:30
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Had a panel interview for an interesting role. During that interview, the hiring manager commented repeatedly on my '5-star, excellent', etc. resume. I get a call ~week later from their HR person who says they've identified another candidate, and then sends me a different job to apply for. That hiring team apparently wants to talk to me. The first role seemed to be a good fit for my background and interests -- analytics and research on emerging electrical generation technologies with some 'machine learning' thrown into the mix. After the interview it seemed like more just analytics on whatever experiments they had in place. This new role is apparently more entrenched in the modeling aspect. Seems like a case of an organization not really understanding how to communicate their needs. It's a conservative, slow-moving industry I guess. Searching on job title alone, it sounds like it would be a step down. Think I'm going to take this opportunity to just see how far negotiation can take me. Kudaros fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 10:11
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Poopernickel posted:this right here is a five-dollar word Excellent word. Barry Schwarz explores this idea contrasted with maximizers in the context of making choices in Paradox of Choice. Good book. If you're basically happy where you are and good with the money, I'd hunker down but perhaps ask for a raise. Incidentally, I started out in the high 5 figs in a midwestern-ish mid size city doing data science in a place Im an industry I'm not a huge fan of (health insurance). Postdoc fell through and I simply took the first option. Not too too bad, but learning opportunities were scarce until we got bought out by a larger company. Now my manager's micromanaging tendencies have gotten out of hand and my responsibilities have grown, so I'm either trying to switch teams or jump ship. In any case it appears that this job is paying me less salary than an equivalent government posting. Anyone else have your direct manager freak out on you for getting help (securing a company laptop) from another manager? I feel like I have more bosses than teammates.
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Feb 19, 2021 05:17
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Never heard of this guy til now. Any book recommendations?
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Feb 19, 2021 17:20
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