Need career advice please

cinnamony

OleRodrigo wrote: »

If you've worked on the Kaggle data sets I guess that would be fine. It seems you've done most of the heavy lifting, you just need to tweak a few things to get your foot in the door.

I agree about the Excel certs - ECDL, Office etc. However, I did a contract a few years ago for a global company with their EMEA base in Ireland. They were basically a business service section for that region and most of them were Business Analysts, about 120 in total. All of them used excel with the data analysis plugin as their 'go to' productivity tool. There were several interns and graduates given tasks to do - mostly data cleaning from SQL exports - , all were done in excel.

If you can handle some SQL queries and know your way around Excel and its data extensions, you're all set. R, python , SPSS, Tableau etc etc...leave it for another day ( if you ever see them again )

Yeah I use the data sets from kaggle, us gov etc. to practice creating algorithms and such...
I used excel a lot but it was really for formatting, pivot tables, charts, VBA, calculations etc... I'm guessing by the plugin you mean the analysis toolpak? I haven't used this but learning won't be a problem! I actually know how to use SQL, Python and R very well, also worked with SPSS but it isn't my favourite (I prefer R) and never tried Tableau.

I'll teach myself to use the analysis plugin then to complete the package

Thanks again

cinnamony

14ned wrote: »

Do bear in mind that Continental Europe salaries are lower than here. As a fresh graduate 15k I'd have said was reasonable for Western Europe, 8k for Eastern Europe. Unlike over here, they tend to award big pay increases if they want to retain you after a few months, so it's not self sabotage to start underpaid like it is over here. They also look after their employees, invest in them. Employees are not disposable assets to be strip mined and discarded like here.



I'm told that the fellas look pretty good too!

But more seriously, as a female you should prepare yourself for some ... let's call it "traditional" ... attitudes towards female engineers of the kind that would be seriously not okay in Ireland or the UK. It's very commonplace in Continental Europe. I mean, I was shocked, and I'm a man, but it's absolutely ubiquitous and considered normal, and the further east and south you go, the more those attitudes will be on open display.

Now, that doesn't mean female engineers can't do well by any means, it's just you need to act like a female continental european engineer, and it's a tough thing to achieve as an Anglo-Saxon woman because it's not at all how women here behave, it wouldn't be considered appropriate here. One of my exs who is Spanish is now fairly senior and she's a programmer, she's done very well. But let's just say she's pretty "full on" as a personality. But then you have to be over there in software, otherwise you're not taken seriously as a woman engineer.



I think employers don't think that either. But it's a numbers game, it's about effort expended on recruitment for the benefit gained. Most CV submissions see about six seconds spent on assessing if they're suitable. If you haven't told the reader a reason to keep reading in the first line, you're finished.

Even I with a CV stretching over thirty pages and twenty years in the field still struggle to get past recruiters. I've been applying to go onsite in the UK to shore up this year's income, not enough remote working income has landed this tax year. My major stumbling block are the recruiters, I'm out of practice at feeding them boxes to tick. You must remember they're on a quota system, unless you spoon feed them they'll bin your application as costing too much effort relative to other applications. I'll get there eventually.

(Or, please god, some 6 month C++ contracts turn up in Ireland soon. The market is dead as a doornail right now )

Niall

I was expecting they would be, I'm not worried about being underpaid but would it be enough to live on? I don't have any financial aid so I would have to at least be able to support myself, I'm assuming if the salaries are lower then cost of loving is lower too??

Not too bad then!

I see, thank you for the warning! Would they bin my application just for being a woman though? As in, will it be difficult to get a position just based on my gender or is it more of a problem once I start working?

I don't mind dealing with these attitudes as I'm very strong willed and determined, my dad is a bit like this too to be honest so its like he's been preparing me all my life aha.

From what I've been told sometimes they won't even look at it and just use computer programs to filter through, i think whether you're trying to get your foot in the door or whether you're someone as experienced as yourself this is always an issue. To me it all sounds a bit robotic, but at the same with the number of applicants it makes sense, its a frustrating situation to say the least.

I hope the market will pick up for you!

rainbow kirby

Tons of data science work in London - worth a shot here.

14ned

cinnamony wrote: »

I was expecting they would be, I'm not worried about being underpaid but would it be enough to live on? I don't have any financial aid so I would have to at least be able to support myself, I'm assuming if the salaries are lower then cost of loving is lower too??

We didn't have this back then, but nowadays a site like this:

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Ireland&country2=Spain&city1=Dublin&city2=Madrid

... lets you compare cost of living in cities according to internet user supplied data.

According to them, an after tax income of €4.5k/month in Dublin would be about equivalent to an after tax income of €3.1k/month in Madrid. So if you were asking for €22k in Dublin, you'd ask for €16k in Madrid. Which sounds about right.

I see, thank you for the warning! Would they bin my application just for being a woman though?

Honestly I don't know, in my entire time working in Spain I never saw a female applicant to a job opening where I was working. And I really can't say for the rest of of southern and eastern Europe. Also, all of this was fifteen years ago. I daresay things have greatly Americanised, as is usually the case, since. Certainly nobody is drinking copious alcohol as a matter of routine during the day job in Spain any more.

As in, will it be difficult to get a position just based on my gender or is it more of a problem once I start working?

Purely based on my ex's experience - and she's a single data point, so don't read too much - you have to put up with a lot of very patronising attitudes and men trying it on very aggressively i.e. pawing you. But equally, something you're allowed to do in the south and east is really lose your temper at work and that's culturally acceptable if justified, unlike around here where you're not really allowed to have passionate responses about anything.

So as she would say (we are still in touch), you can aggressively use these cultural differences to your advantage, indeed if anything you are expected to do so as a successful female engineer. This is different to the US or UK or Ireland. Here's it's frowned upon to demonstrate gender and wield it like an axe. That is not the case towards the south and east of Europe. And she's very senior now, one step below board level, she didn't get fired when they were firing almost everybody under the age of 40 during the crisis when ordinarily women would be fired before men under some daft assumption that they could use the free time to raise their children better or something.

So you can be very successful as a female engineer in a heavily patriarchal culture, but be aware that you will always be paid far below the men. It's the one thing that really annoys my ex actually, men pawing her under the table and her slapping them hard is part of the job, but always getting paid 20% less despite that they fired all the men of similar seniority grates on her. But as I said to her during the crisis, maybe its her lower cost is why they kept her and not the men? Dunno, it's pure speculation. Either way she's still got her apartment and all her friends had to move back home with their parents. So don't look a gift horse in the mouth I guess.

From what I've been told sometimes they won't even look at it and just use computer programs to filter through, i think whether you're trying to get your foot in the door or whether you're someone as experienced as yourself this is always an issue. To me it all sounds a bit robotic, but at the same with the number of applicants it makes sense, its a frustrating situation to say the least.

It doesn't matter where in the West you go really. Everybody's doing keyword matching and mindless box ticking. First there is the recruiter filter, they have their own things they look for not really related much to the role. Once past that there is the HR filter, they too have their own agenda. And if past that, now you're onto the engineering filter. An experienced person will therefore have three editions of their CV, one for the recruiters, one for HR, one for other software engineers, all with the right buzzwords and box ticking items for each. But it's a difficult trick to master, and easy to forget if you get out of practice like me.

Niall

osforum4

Don't get it wrong but as per my experienced, I can say that the things which you learned during college time most of the part of that are not useful in professional life.
So first join any company as a trainee so you can learn how to work with industries.

deeplearner

Hi all,

great thread which I'd like to rescue if that's ok.

I am in similiar position to OP. I am an MSC postgrad interested in machine learning career hopefully doing both engineering and analysis (machine learning engineer type role). Perhaps naively trying to become unicorn type Data Scientist..... Anyway my final exam from MSC in Data Analytics from UCD this summer. I am a career changer with some software eng background but not commercial programming.

I am not sure I am really ready for interviews but have applied anyway to junior data science roles in Ireland but have had no interviews. My MSC focussed on the maths around things like Bayesian Inference/linear algebra but I've had to supplement with MOOCs to do more applied stuff like deep learning.

I just finished my last work gig and can hold off working to build a decent portfolio or kaggle profile but not sure what is best.

My options seem to be:

1) Apply for junior analyst roles- which could be anything from Excel to SQL reporting (descriptive analytics I guess). Then grow into big data tech like Nosql/Hadoop or try predictive side with prototyping in python etc.
2) Apply software engineering roles. Get the basics in Building Web apps. And hopefully try build data pipelines from there or productionize machine learning prototypes....
3) Take some time off to build decent portfolio via MOOCs or kaggle profile to get interview directly as entry level data scientist/machine learning engineer.
4) Take a job in my old career in some area related to analytics and try move internally, while being upfront about ambitions.

I am up for relocation and have been looking around sites for Berlin/London etc. It seems unlikely to get a junior position by applying from here in Ireland. @rainbowkirby any thoughts on the London job market. I see London teeming with jobs. Some very well paid Junior jobs but I can only assume massive local competition.

cinnamony

Hi everyone,

would just like to give a quick update. I really got great advice here. I just want to say thanks again to all of you and in particularly to Niall for providing so much insight


I have a friend who's been working for 4 months as an entry level Data Scientist and he offered to put in my CV for me. I almost cried for joy until he told me its unpaid and I had to refuse.

I didn't refuse it out of snobbery, the role was both full time and long term and the costs of living in Dublin are just too great. I'm with my parents at the moments but I help them pay the bills, I would also have transport food etc... Being unpaid - although I would have valued the experience - is just not an option for me.

So I recently got a job in retail, not what I want but it helps financially and gives me something to do while I look for a job in Europe.
In the meantime I am continuing with my own projects, I don't know if they mean anything or if I can put them on my CV but I figured I should not only continue practicing but also there's much left to learn.

@deeplearner, i don't think I'm in a position to give advice considering we're on the same boat (hello from the struggling side btw ) but I was thinking of maybe looking for voluntary projects in data science. To be honest I haven't looked at it yet as I'm learning the ropes at my new job and getting sorted out so I don't know if its even a thing, but I've seen voluntary IT work being offered before so I thought it would be worth a try. Nothing full time or anything just one off gigs.

awec

IMO this unpaid internship rubbish is a complete joke.

It's definitely not snobbery to turn it down, you are completely correct to do so. Why work for free?

cinnamony

awec wrote: »

IMO this unpaid internship rubbish is a complete joke.

It's definitely not snobbery to turn it down, you are completely correct to do so. Why work for free?

Thank you and I agree with you, I don't understand why it would be legal especially in Dublin where the cost of living is incredibly high. (but even everywhere else people need money to live)

I understand I need experience and if it was for a few weeks I'd be more inclined to do it. But 40 hours a week for a year at least?? No way! Impossible for me to do, I wouldn't even be eligible for any assistance from social welfare or anything.

Buford T Justice

cinnamony wrote: »

Thank you and I agree with you, I don't understand why it would be legal especially in Dublin where the cost of living is incredibly high. (but even everywhere else people need money to live)

I understand I need experience and if it was for a few weeks I'd be more inclined to do it. But 40 hours a week for a year at least?? No way! Impossible for me to do, I wouldn't even be eligible for any assistance from social welfare or anything.

You've gotta be taking the mickey here, that's scandalous.

Ardennes1944

Would you try Switzerland OP?

purpleisafruit

As the holder of a master in Data Science, please for your own sake, don't accept 22k as a starting salary. You have a valuable skillset so don't undersell yourself.

cinnamony

Buford T Justice wrote: »

You've gotta be taking the mickey here, that's scandalous.

I wish I was I couldn't believe it really, my friend has been there since February and when I asked him how much longer he has he said they didn't give him a definite answer just that they needed it until at least Jan-Feb 2018.

I actually saw another ad on indeed asking from unpaid data scientists, this company didn't provide any details in terms of length and hours worked though...

Ardennes1944 wrote: »

Would you try Switzerland OP?

Absolutely! Always wanted to go to Switzerland actually aha. Is the market good there?

purpleisafruit wrote: »

As the holder of a master in Data Science, please for your own sake, don't accept 22k as a starting salary. You have a valuable skillset so don't undersell yourself.

Is it okay if I don't have much experience though? That was my worry really, that I was asking for too much for entry level

awec

If they need him they should pay him. If they can't afford him then tough ****.

Your friend is screwing himself.

cinnamony

awec wrote: »

If they need him they should pay him. If they can't afford him then tough ****.

Your friend is screwing himself.

He sees it as an investment in his career, he sounded like he feels they're doing him a favour by giving him a job in the field...:rolleyes:

purpleisafruit

cinnamony wrote: »

Is it okay if I don't have much experience though? That was my worry really, that I was asking for too much for entry level

You're a highly educated person, 22k is too low! As a guide, I'm a Computer Science grad and my first job out of college was in the high 30s. If you take 22k now it will take you longer to get to that level. You're screwing yourself over in the longer term.