Lessons learned which I hope I know earlier
When I was trying to start out my journey in data science, I tried a lot of ways to submit my resume just for an opportunity to start a data science internship. However, no matter how hard I tried, due to lack of technical skill, I still could not get myself into that field.
I was pretty upset.
When I was about to give up, my friend shared a full-time Data Science Internship, and tell me to have a try.
I said yes!
Definitely, I will try it!
That’s really my great chance to make it. I started to prepare even though I had just submitted my resume – not even received a call for the interview yet. A few days later, I received the email I had longed for. The interview was being set up a few weeks later.
Fast forward to the interview day, I prepared a lot of projects to impress the interviewer but at the end, the main focus of the interviewer turned out to be just looking for a person with a great attitude to learning.
You are right, I got the internship and this experience indeed becomes the most memorable internship experience in my life.
Given a Mac desktop, I do not even know how to use a mac, but gratefully, I am given sufficient time to learn. Would you like to know how is my first-month experience? I could tell you that during my first month, what I have done is just starting to familiarise myself to use mac, mac terminal, and reading documentations to hopefully make myself start well.
Yes, I do not actually work very hard in my first month and that’s why I felt I could hardly survive in the second month. I started to get a lot of work, started to be pushed hard in order to finish the given tasks. I could still recall, everyday in my second month, I need to work at least until 12am, trying really hard to fix all the bugs of a given task in scraping a whole website ( I am completely a newbie in web crawling that time), with the hope that I am able to deliver up to his or her’s expectations.
As a human being, rest is essential and soon, I started to feel exhausted. I felt that I am always carrying a big stone on my back which makes me feel to just wanted to take a rest at home. My mind keeps telling me to quit, "It is just an internship, just quit!".
After a year of working experience, here are the TOP 3 pieces of Advice or thoughts which I want to share with you guys!
If a boss is willing to push you to your limits, he or she is considered as a good boss.
Not every boss is willing to put the effort into training or pushing you. Your boss does not have the responsibility to train you, he or she could just leave you to do some simple task so that he or she will have more time to focus on his or her task.
In addition, if your boss not only willing to push you but also very strong in the area which you would like to have in your career, do cherish this opportunity.
For example, maybe you are working as a data scientist in a company and you hope to improve your technical skills. However, your boss is more specialize in providing data insights using powerpoint/Excel, then perhaps you can consider making a change for your career.
The stricter boss will force you to be more independent
During my internship, I was given only 2 chances to ask questions per day. Besides, my boss required me to google the answer for at least 2 hours continuously before asking any questions. At first, I was really frustrated but gradually I could understand my boss’s intention of shaping me to a person who can work independently.
Some of the times, I am given a task to finish by the end of the day, but actually, most of my time had been used upon making a connection to the server. This is because their server is located outside of Singapore, and they have their own Bash script to connect to the server. The task given is already quite challenging, plus most of your time is used to connect to the server, which indeed will make you become more stressful.
As you know problem-solving skills is one of the skills that is highly demanded in the industry. Having this skill will definitely make you become a person who is highly sought-after.
Don’t be afraid of your strict boss, be more proactive
This is one of the bits of advice which my boss gives me after the end of my internship – To Be More Proactive.
You may think, what?
My boss is already so strict, while I do not have much time to finish my task, you are telling me to be more proactive?
Instead of waiting for your boss to give you instructions on how to solve the task, you should be more proactive by testing some of your approaches or purposes your boss some solutions you think is feasible and then ask for guidance.
This instead will not only reduce the works to be done by your boss but also showcase your ability to solving a problem.
Final Thoughts
Really hope this article will benefit you in any terms. Remember:
Don’t pick a job. Pick a boss. Your first boss is the biggest factor in your career success. – William Raduchel
If your boss is a strict boss, don’t be scared, instead, be more proactive and learn as much as you can. I promise you, you will find how fast you can improve yourself in a short period of time!
About the Author
Low Wei Hong is a Data Scientist at Shopee. His experiences involved more on crawling websites, creating data pipeline and also implementing machine learning models on solving business problems.
He provides crawling services that are able to provide you the accurate and cleaned data which you need. You can visit this website to view his portfolio and also to contact him for crawling services.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Medium.
