Changing career from digital marketing to data scientist?! Diploma vs Master vs Bootcamp coding
I Was contemplating whether to take this following path me. In this title, you can also sense my concern coming from a business/marketing dreaming to create one simulated device application through coding or programming to a front-end application for processing. To be honest, this discovery or self-desire enables you to ingest and compare on several inputs and feedback from people and people surround me. I also followed several insights from YouTube, highly recommend Ken Jee, mayuko, YK Sugi, and Tim Ruscica :)
Well, these are some ways to get to my career path, all of this certification programs, bootcamp, and master in data science, jump directly as quantitative research fellow, and working experience as analyst whom deal with data on daily basis. You might encounter some people not doing all of suggested ways, I don’t know, the created list below were my consideration when I decided to transitioned my career.
General Assembly Intensive coding // Boot camp
You can find GA Bootcamp course syllabus here. I attended introductory networking event called Black Cat Data (BCD) Data Science Programs are designed for IT and non-IT professionals who are interested in a career in Data Science & AI . I connect to their outreach communication officer in black cat data science immersive, they are partnered with UTS, uni that I attended currently.
This most quick path would help us if you want to see if data science is right for you. I came as an international student, so less likely to get this without proper student visa, by the time I took my temporary graduate visa, I practically work full-time in 2 year-time, and to be honest too, I was burned out from my work, so yes, I attended their free data science event in GA, Market St, Sydney CBD, not enrolled at the end. At this stage, building portfolio and accepting projects with unpaid experience, will come at enthusiast and ‘just do it’ learning act. Have a strong technical portfolio and networking and resume help.
They are costly, but you can get practical as much as you paid, I knew one working in Canva, working as full stack engineer without proper degree, yes anything’s possible. But also this is not highly seen by companies recruiting only with coding bootcamp. Make sense, they hire first-year CS undergrad student and trained them, instead of, coding workshop license and certification. My research goes only to proper website, however, I half-regretted for not searching on LinkedIn people who have graduated from the bootcamp in the past few sessions. Soon discovery should give you some useful tips and insights about the success rate! Best of luck :’)
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Diploma of Data Science (Internet of Things) from (James Cook) University Online
This certificate is relatively shorter term and relatively low cost compared than Master degree. I also considered this option, see here for their syllabus, which is similar to online courses, their syllabus are designed by university and education institution. I understand my strength and weakness when I did my diploma online in Project Management from Open Colleges, that I have reasonable amount of motivation and drive, sometimes group team formed are stranger, and they are mostly lazy or did not bother about mark or score that much.
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Master degree at recognisable universities in Sydney
This year I am attending full-time uni with 2 years, mostly, you could spend 1 year or 1.5 years if your background comes from CS degree. For someone who is like me, wanting to pursue a career in data science, university are still utilising the old/existing coding programming language. So, get your hands to them already! Yes, I bet by this time, it is all self-coding journey and outside uni learning experience. The fundamental of programming and statistical courses will keep us handy, I am telling you.
I am quite concerned that the tools or visualisation SaaS platform that the data science degree would not be sufficient in the future, I heard you (thoughts). As I explore this path and struggle, I was exposed to Python and love the application. This could be your own question to discover, it would not matter as long as you do some self-study and produce projects. If you really want to put your best foot forward, I would recommend majoring in data science and minoring in software development (our university allowing that option).
Checking the higher education box, supporter and broaden our network with alumni and career network opportunities. However, I am also aware of the cost, and long-term tuition fee, and longest time commitment amongst other option.
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Online Courses + Hackathon Projects
Yes, low-cost and you can follow your own timestamp and accomplishment. This offers the most flexible path you can choose. However, this is not successful strategy for me, I was quite moody and I know I work best with structure and following it in timely manner.
With learning programming in Python or R, there are some advices from the following YouTuber I followed, they provide crash course and advices to start a project as soon as you can, and beginner projects. So, take notes and get practical on what coding program and algorithms, try to implement them from scratch. I mostly gained real-time application by getting to their github in video description, learn their source code and work on them by copying to Jupyter notebook. This is where you can collect your own data or go more advanced concepts like NLP, Neural network, deep learning, and all those fancy computer vision.
Technology can be used mindlessly or mindfully. The key is to put it to work for you rather than getting pushed around by it.
James Clear, Author of the NYT bestseller, Atomic Habits (atomichabits.com)
One thing for sure is that by the time I graduate from my university, trends will rapidly change promoting new tools, different SaaS system, and everything will be shaken, only thing remained would be our resilience adapting learning to learn attitude. I highly rely on and promote the idea of learning to learn. I can say I hate changes and unlearning our unconscious perception that we built on since we were kids, not aware of the danger of assumption. Making studying a habit and you can I love this posts, I find them useful and totally relatable, do look at these links!
If you are reading this until the end, and find it useful, I appreciate if you do y search and take my words as your references, time and personal reasons are also my decision factor. I also knew some individual coming from a research and actuarial student quantitative background, and they can get their path to data science. Things not to do was wasting my time and worrying without wanting to make a switch.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-2020-web-developer-roadmap-76503ddfb327
