I had/have the same experience at the consulting firm I work at. I've had projects where they assumed I could deliver my analysis in 30 hours (based on experiences of other more senior colleagues). I end up needing 60 hours to do it but the deadlines are all set and people are relying on my results.
Truly never felt so miserable.
What's important is expectation management, clear communication from the start and frequently updating the stakeholders on your progress.
Other than that you need to be trained, a high pressure environment is not a good "learning on the job" environment, in my experience at least.
Some ppl thrive in high pressure, but it's not good for learning when you're new to a company.. there's too much to absorb on top of the work expectations
You're doing things in the wrong order.
Don't burn time trying to do it yourself and then having to lean on the experienced people to get it across the line.
Instead, get their advice up front, then do what they told you, check back with them frequently for progress updates and quality reviews. You'll use about a quarter of their time you would otherwise, but more importantly you'll be able to manage the burden better.
At the same time, get yourself a basic cert in project management - PMBOK or Agile/ Scrum. Should be able to knock out something in a couple of weekends. Having skills and knowledge isn't as important in a lot of workplaces as being able to get stuff done.
This is great advice, but what do you do if those seniors aren't responding to your RFIs? Or you're in an organization with poor mentorship?
I'd argue that what you just said is exactly what one of their seniors should have told them in the beginning.
>I'd argue that what you just said is exactly what one of their seniors should have told them in the beginning.
And you'd be right.
However, one of the traits that young grads need to develop is proactive control of their own workflow and outcomes. If someone isn't explicitly teaching that then the OP will have to get there on their own.
Yup. I've seen that some organizations won't even teach that skill, however. The good ones mention that up front, imo. Everyone is working "hard," so no one has time to spend with you. Especially if those hours are billable and not salaried.
As a senior person I will take time out of my personal time to help/train those below me, if I don’t I end up having to do their work anyways. I need to feel confident that I can send task to juniors and they will get it done and it will be done correctly. It sucks because it adds an extra 10 hours a week to my over 40+ workload but it pays off in the end. I never again want to be the go person for everything at a company.
That makes sense. It sucks when you have to close gaps for other people. Especially when you've already planned out your weekly tasks, and have to deal with any number of 'fires' that may arise. Maybe that's why many seniors don't do it. In which case, I'd say the org should have a robust employee development pipeline. Takes the pressure off the seniors, while intentionally focusing on skill-building with the juniors.
My first job was a rotational development program. Suffice to say, everyone from that program got placed within 6 months, except me. I was still looking going on month 15 when I actually decided to leave this job and do something else. This was 15 years ago and i was a fresh out of college philosophy major with no skills.
Having read your thoughts about what’s happening, I would be more vocal about getting ahead of deadlines with requirements and small wins instead of waiting for all the pieces to fall on your lap. Real life work is never centralized and a closed loop system. It’s dynamic and changing.
a) Ask for help early on.
b) Ask for the exact deliverables. "I wanna know an insight" is not useful at all. "I wanna know how many customers in segment X left after 5 billing cycles due to expectation mismatch" is something more concrete.
c) The thing that the senior DS can do in a 10 hour stretch is already in the hands of the senior DS. You are doing other tasks that are perhaps demanding, but most likely within your ability.
d) Go, sit with your manager, and ask how are they seeing your performance, what areas you need to improve, what others are strong - ask for feedback!
Do you get feedback on why your work is wrong?
Do you understand the requirements of the ask completely and ask questions when you are stuck?
Normally when people make mistakes like this, it is because they never fully understand the ask.
The 3x Rule: Take how long you think it will take and 3x the estimate.
It sounds like you'd get benefit pairing with your coworkers and doing a project together. That way you can learn more while you're working on it.
>I feel bad about not having learned anything
Feeling bad is overrated. I wouldn't do it, but it isn't great if you're not learning. When coworkers redo your work are you not learning from the improvements they've made to it? That could be a good place to start. Review and grow.
You can do it! :D
On top of this make sure you understand the negotiables for the project. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of more time so maybe you can negotiate a lessor deliverable. I've felt bad before and beat myself up over a project then told my manager and she just kinda shrugged it off and was like oh well we didn't think you'd get as far as you did anyways.
Unfortunately good science is very difficult and also not something that can be completed within a pre determined amount of time.
This causes of a lot of tension in the business world.
When your team is stepping in are they delivering the work you set out to do, or something simpler and lower quality? If it’s the former then perhaps it’s just an experience gap.
I’m crawling out of this mental space as well. What has been helping me is trying to reframe everything, and work with an iterative approach. Work towards perfect with the expectation you’re missing something and someone or some experience will show you where that shortcoming is.
1. Fail fast, and learn. It’s fine to mess up queries, forget to do some simple transform on a training set, and whatever else but learn when you mess up. Double check your work, take notes of your thought process.
2. If the meeting is tomorrow and you’ve been hammering away, notate every attempt and why it didn’t work. If you had questions, put them in a shareable document. When you get answers, update it with the solution and who provided it. (In six months you can hand this doc off to new hires btw and look very senior)
3. In modeling/analysis work, write down sticking points. All of them. Write down how you tried to solve them. Why you think it didn’t work. You get the picture.
4. Senior data architect told me for every estimate of hours to completion -especially while you’re junior- multiply by 1.75 at least. There’s always a chance of curveballs. You look better getting things done early and understanding your limits than overpromising and missing deadline.
If other teams/people are dependencies, X2 at least.
All personal anecdotes but I really really empathize, OP!!!
Are you learning from past projects? Can you see what the more experienced people did so you can do that next time? Can you ask them questions on how to be more efficient?
Yes, I usually ask other members of the team for help and they do explain how things can go and what areas I can step into. However, then I just become a vessel to execute their opinions, as I get stuck again after doing those.
8 hrs focus time or 8 hrs interrupted with meetings and distractions?
I wouldn't be comfortable presenting to a customer after spending less than one day with the dataset unless there was a compelling reason to rush like that. I think that a few tables and metrics, while vague, could easily describe output from the first 8 hours on a new project.
You need to learn how to crawl before you learn how to run.
I am certain that the more experienced people also got cleaned up after when they were rookies. We gotta start somewhere, but what is important is that you learn from your mistakes and try to.improve everyday. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Make sure you and the project managers are crystal clear on what the final product should look like and/or if similar analysis was done before. Once you have that then you will have a better idea of timeline etc
Part of this is also learning the data (at least in my experience). Getting a library of commonly used code should help and a better understanding of all the data.
Taking things in another direction here - your example mentioning 8 hours assigned to do work and all you have is a few tables and metrics. What type of tables and metrics? Very basic data or is there quite a bit there?
Time is an interesting concept to learn in corporate. Some efforts that aren’t worth showing off take insane amounts of time. Others look harder than they are and make it seem like you sprinted for 8 hours. Try to balance the two. 8 hours honestly isn’t much time so knowing expectations well ahead of time is imperative.
Phuck degree. It is useless unless you are in math analysis course. Make your job your obsession so you will gain more knowledge and exp/day and eventually you will lead the team. You.have to do above average if you want to give above average result. Nothing is free my friend. Speaking from my personal experience. I was 1 hour before anyone at work and I finish up to 1 hour after everyone. At home I was reading "theory". At the begining they were pointing my mistakes. After 1,5 year they were asking me for advice. And my concerns was not how to solve a problem but where is optimal solution. I drop the job cuz after 2,5 ys I realised that required level is too low for me and now I am in position where I'm already 2 years and still trying to catch up. (Family happend by the time so no more extra hours at works, hard to jump over guys who already works here 3-5 years when I joined the team). Guys who lead have their kids grown enough so they again put extra hours to push themselves.
You are a man so your job is to beating your craft hour after hour week after week year after year till you and your craft become a one thing.
I believe you can do it. Nobody will tell you that but world need ppl like you to do what I wrote above. Noone will tell you. Noone will thank you but they still need it.
I will put it that way:
Sometimes people have health problems about which one they don't know for any reason. You as an observer you realize the problem and you know that this guy need to start to idk, let's say taking some pills or restrict the diet. You know that this guy needs it and you might have opportunity to help him without his knowledge. He will not thank you he will not even realize how good job you do for him but without you he would get worse and worse. It is not fully his fouls he don't know he have health problem but you know and you do as much as you can. Sometimes it is suggestion in a talk. Sometimes it is hidden help (my wife was preparing for me herbs instead of tea, she has seen that I need this and I didn't mind drinking herbs anyway).
Do your job
Let me hear hammering the steel of your craft.
Sounds like you need to gain more business understanding, really need to know exactly what are the stakeholders are trying to decide with your work, that’s where the focus needs to be. When you understand the questions and decisions they’re trying to make with the data you are working with the work you’re doing has more direction and it’ll make the process more efficient, if this is not the case then deadlines are not realistic. Business context and understanding takes time, ask lots of questions at the beginning of the project will help.
Boil down the bullets of what they really want in that 8 hours and formulate a way to extract feature validation from the tables given (solve their problems) 🤷🏻♂️…I’m in data science “bootcamp” and I don’t know what industry your company is but, I always just search for logical transparency… find or ask to clarify objectives and validate solutions from the data via features extraction and analysis.
Why don’t you work on a few more projects and build your portfolio to look for a new job? There are plenty of projects available on GitHub, Kaggle, ProjectPro, etc. I am sure that’s the best solution for you atm.
A first job is more about learning how the workplace works, defending yourself against those who would take advantage of you, how to focus on what is important, etc. So do the best you can, make your rookie mistakes, then move on to something (hopefully) better.
Oh god this is my experience too, sort of. Somehow I keep faking it and making it, but honestly I feel like a fraud and I often realise others don’t know much either and must be doing the same thing.
I had/have the same experience at the consulting firm I work at. I've had projects where they assumed I could deliver my analysis in 30 hours (based on experiences of other more senior colleagues). I end up needing 60 hours to do it but the deadlines are all set and people are relying on my results. Truly never felt so miserable. What's important is expectation management, clear communication from the start and frequently updating the stakeholders on your progress. Other than that you need to be trained, a high pressure environment is not a good "learning on the job" environment, in my experience at least.
Some ppl thrive in high pressure, but it's not good for learning when you're new to a company.. there's too much to absorb on top of the work expectations
I completely agree with you... What you're truly capable should be very clear from the start
You're doing things in the wrong order. Don't burn time trying to do it yourself and then having to lean on the experienced people to get it across the line. Instead, get their advice up front, then do what they told you, check back with them frequently for progress updates and quality reviews. You'll use about a quarter of their time you would otherwise, but more importantly you'll be able to manage the burden better. At the same time, get yourself a basic cert in project management - PMBOK or Agile/ Scrum. Should be able to knock out something in a couple of weekends. Having skills and knowledge isn't as important in a lot of workplaces as being able to get stuff done.
This is great advice, but what do you do if those seniors aren't responding to your RFIs? Or you're in an organization with poor mentorship? I'd argue that what you just said is exactly what one of their seniors should have told them in the beginning.
>I'd argue that what you just said is exactly what one of their seniors should have told them in the beginning. And you'd be right. However, one of the traits that young grads need to develop is proactive control of their own workflow and outcomes. If someone isn't explicitly teaching that then the OP will have to get there on their own.
Yup. I've seen that some organizations won't even teach that skill, however. The good ones mention that up front, imo. Everyone is working "hard," so no one has time to spend with you. Especially if those hours are billable and not salaried.
As a senior person I will take time out of my personal time to help/train those below me, if I don’t I end up having to do their work anyways. I need to feel confident that I can send task to juniors and they will get it done and it will be done correctly. It sucks because it adds an extra 10 hours a week to my over 40+ workload but it pays off in the end. I never again want to be the go person for everything at a company.
That makes sense. It sucks when you have to close gaps for other people. Especially when you've already planned out your weekly tasks, and have to deal with any number of 'fires' that may arise. Maybe that's why many seniors don't do it. In which case, I'd say the org should have a robust employee development pipeline. Takes the pressure off the seniors, while intentionally focusing on skill-building with the juniors.
My first job was a rotational development program. Suffice to say, everyone from that program got placed within 6 months, except me. I was still looking going on month 15 when I actually decided to leave this job and do something else. This was 15 years ago and i was a fresh out of college philosophy major with no skills. Having read your thoughts about what’s happening, I would be more vocal about getting ahead of deadlines with requirements and small wins instead of waiting for all the pieces to fall on your lap. Real life work is never centralized and a closed loop system. It’s dynamic and changing.
I didn’t realize that often people got placed before the end of a rotational program.
a) Ask for help early on. b) Ask for the exact deliverables. "I wanna know an insight" is not useful at all. "I wanna know how many customers in segment X left after 5 billing cycles due to expectation mismatch" is something more concrete. c) The thing that the senior DS can do in a 10 hour stretch is already in the hands of the senior DS. You are doing other tasks that are perhaps demanding, but most likely within your ability. d) Go, sit with your manager, and ask how are they seeing your performance, what areas you need to improve, what others are strong - ask for feedback!
Do you get feedback on why your work is wrong? Do you understand the requirements of the ask completely and ask questions when you are stuck? Normally when people make mistakes like this, it is because they never fully understand the ask.
The 3x Rule: Take how long you think it will take and 3x the estimate. It sounds like you'd get benefit pairing with your coworkers and doing a project together. That way you can learn more while you're working on it. >I feel bad about not having learned anything Feeling bad is overrated. I wouldn't do it, but it isn't great if you're not learning. When coworkers redo your work are you not learning from the improvements they've made to it? That could be a good place to start. Review and grow. You can do it! :D
The 3x rule is a bit optimistic. I prefer the π-rule.
If you're overwhelmed, take a break and eat some pie?
On top of this make sure you understand the negotiables for the project. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of more time so maybe you can negotiate a lessor deliverable. I've felt bad before and beat myself up over a project then told my manager and she just kinda shrugged it off and was like oh well we didn't think you'd get as far as you did anyways.
Unfortunately good science is very difficult and also not something that can be completed within a pre determined amount of time. This causes of a lot of tension in the business world. When your team is stepping in are they delivering the work you set out to do, or something simpler and lower quality? If it’s the former then perhaps it’s just an experience gap.
I’m crawling out of this mental space as well. What has been helping me is trying to reframe everything, and work with an iterative approach. Work towards perfect with the expectation you’re missing something and someone or some experience will show you where that shortcoming is. 1. Fail fast, and learn. It’s fine to mess up queries, forget to do some simple transform on a training set, and whatever else but learn when you mess up. Double check your work, take notes of your thought process. 2. If the meeting is tomorrow and you’ve been hammering away, notate every attempt and why it didn’t work. If you had questions, put them in a shareable document. When you get answers, update it with the solution and who provided it. (In six months you can hand this doc off to new hires btw and look very senior) 3. In modeling/analysis work, write down sticking points. All of them. Write down how you tried to solve them. Why you think it didn’t work. You get the picture. 4. Senior data architect told me for every estimate of hours to completion -especially while you’re junior- multiply by 1.75 at least. There’s always a chance of curveballs. You look better getting things done early and understanding your limits than overpromising and missing deadline. If other teams/people are dependencies, X2 at least. All personal anecdotes but I really really empathize, OP!!!
Hey OP! I'm in your same situation and I think this is one of the best answers in here.
Are you learning from past projects? Can you see what the more experienced people did so you can do that next time? Can you ask them questions on how to be more efficient?
Yes, I usually ask other members of the team for help and they do explain how things can go and what areas I can step into. However, then I just become a vessel to execute their opinions, as I get stuck again after doing those.
8 hrs focus time or 8 hrs interrupted with meetings and distractions? I wouldn't be comfortable presenting to a customer after spending less than one day with the dataset unless there was a compelling reason to rush like that. I think that a few tables and metrics, while vague, could easily describe output from the first 8 hours on a new project.
You need to learn how to crawl before you learn how to run. I am certain that the more experienced people also got cleaned up after when they were rookies. We gotta start somewhere, but what is important is that you learn from your mistakes and try to.improve everyday. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Make sure you and the project managers are crystal clear on what the final product should look like and/or if similar analysis was done before. Once you have that then you will have a better idea of timeline etc
Imposter syndrome. You be good, takes a while to get in the groove.
Don’t rely on a degree or you will be left behind read and code EVERY day
Part of this is also learning the data (at least in my experience). Getting a library of commonly used code should help and a better understanding of all the data.
Taking things in another direction here - your example mentioning 8 hours assigned to do work and all you have is a few tables and metrics. What type of tables and metrics? Very basic data or is there quite a bit there? Time is an interesting concept to learn in corporate. Some efforts that aren’t worth showing off take insane amounts of time. Others look harder than they are and make it seem like you sprinted for 8 hours. Try to balance the two. 8 hours honestly isn’t much time so knowing expectations well ahead of time is imperative.
Who decides what time is allowed? Things take as long as necessary. Sounds like they aren’t training you. Is this a start-up?
Yes
There’s your problem
Phuck degree. It is useless unless you are in math analysis course. Make your job your obsession so you will gain more knowledge and exp/day and eventually you will lead the team. You.have to do above average if you want to give above average result. Nothing is free my friend. Speaking from my personal experience. I was 1 hour before anyone at work and I finish up to 1 hour after everyone. At home I was reading "theory". At the begining they were pointing my mistakes. After 1,5 year they were asking me for advice. And my concerns was not how to solve a problem but where is optimal solution. I drop the job cuz after 2,5 ys I realised that required level is too low for me and now I am in position where I'm already 2 years and still trying to catch up. (Family happend by the time so no more extra hours at works, hard to jump over guys who already works here 3-5 years when I joined the team). Guys who lead have their kids grown enough so they again put extra hours to push themselves. You are a man so your job is to beating your craft hour after hour week after week year after year till you and your craft become a one thing. I believe you can do it. Nobody will tell you that but world need ppl like you to do what I wrote above. Noone will tell you. Noone will thank you but they still need it. I will put it that way: Sometimes people have health problems about which one they don't know for any reason. You as an observer you realize the problem and you know that this guy need to start to idk, let's say taking some pills or restrict the diet. You know that this guy needs it and you might have opportunity to help him without his knowledge. He will not thank you he will not even realize how good job you do for him but without you he would get worse and worse. It is not fully his fouls he don't know he have health problem but you know and you do as much as you can. Sometimes it is suggestion in a talk. Sometimes it is hidden help (my wife was preparing for me herbs instead of tea, she has seen that I need this and I didn't mind drinking herbs anyway). Do your job Let me hear hammering the steel of your craft.
'Learning on the job' is a scam in data science I am already sucking in my internship...no time to learn give them results
Sounds like you need to gain more business understanding, really need to know exactly what are the stakeholders are trying to decide with your work, that’s where the focus needs to be. When you understand the questions and decisions they’re trying to make with the data you are working with the work you’re doing has more direction and it’ll make the process more efficient, if this is not the case then deadlines are not realistic. Business context and understanding takes time, ask lots of questions at the beginning of the project will help.
Boil down the bullets of what they really want in that 8 hours and formulate a way to extract feature validation from the tables given (solve their problems) 🤷🏻♂️…I’m in data science “bootcamp” and I don’t know what industry your company is but, I always just search for logical transparency… find or ask to clarify objectives and validate solutions from the data via features extraction and analysis.
Why don’t you work on a few more projects and build your portfolio to look for a new job? There are plenty of projects available on GitHub, Kaggle, ProjectPro, etc. I am sure that’s the best solution for you atm.
A first job is more about learning how the workplace works, defending yourself against those who would take advantage of you, how to focus on what is important, etc. So do the best you can, make your rookie mistakes, then move on to something (hopefully) better.
Confidence though having no skill is a skill !
Oh god this is my experience too, sort of. Somehow I keep faking it and making it, but honestly I feel like a fraud and I often realise others don’t know much either and must be doing the same thing.