
DataTalks.Club
DataTalks.Club - the place to talk about data!
Latest episodes

May 21, 2021 • 1h 3min
How to Market Yourself (without Being a Celebrity) - Shawn Swyx Wang
We talked about:
Shawn’s background and his book
Marketing ourselves
Components of personal marketing
Personal brand for an average developer
Picking a domain: what to write about?
Being too niche
Finding a good niche
Learning in public
Borrowed platforms vs own platform
Starting on social media: Picking what they put down
Career transitioning: mutual exchange of value
Personal marketing for getting a new job
Getting hired through the back door
Finding content ideas
Marketing yourself in public — summary
Open-source knowledge
Internal marketing: promoting ourselves at work
Signature initiative
Public speaking
Wrapping up
Discount for the coding career book
75% of the engineering ladder criteria are not technical
Links:
Shawn's personal page: https://www.swyx.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx
Book of the week page: https://datatalks.club/books/20210510-the-coding-career-handbook.html (with a discount for DTC members!)
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html
Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html

May 14, 2021 • 1h 7min
From Physics to Machine Learning - Tatiana Gabruseva
We talked about:
Tatiana’s background
12 career hacks and changing career
Hack #1: Change your social circle
Hack #2: Forget your fears and stereotypes
Hack #3: Forget distractions
Hack #4: Don’t overestimate others and don’t underestimate yourself
Hack #5: Attention genius
Hack #6: Make a team
Hack #7: Less is more. Forget about perfectionism
Hack #8: Initial creation
Hack #9: Find mentors
Hack #10: Say “no”
Hack #11: Look for failures
Hack #12: Take care of yourself
Kaggle vs internships and pet projects
Resources for learning machine learning
Starting with Kaggle
Improving focus
Astroinformatics
How background in Physics is helpful for transitioning
Leaving academia
Preparing for interviews
Links:
Mock interviews: https://www.pramp.com/
Learning ML: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning and https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning
Python: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning-with-python
SQL: https://www.sqlhabit.com/
Practice: https://www.kaggle.com/
MIT 6.006: https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.006/fall11/notes.shtml
Coding: https://leetcode.com/
System design: https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-design-interview
Ukrainian telegram groups for interview preparation: https://t.me/FaangInterviewChannel, https://t.me/FaangTechInterview, https://t.me/FloodInterview
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

May 7, 2021 • 1h 9min
What I Learned After Interviewing 300 Data Scientists - Oleg Novikov
We talked about:
Oleg’s background
Standing out in recruitment process
NextRound — a service for free mock interviews
Why rejections are generic
Starting NextRount — preparing a list of situations
Steps in the interview process
Read the job description!
CV is your landing page
Take-home assignments
Questions about your past experience
Hypothetical case questions
Technical rounds
Handling rejections
What to do after receiving an offer?
Do recruiters pay attention to age?
Getting a job with a PhD — it’s a cold start problem
Should I answer rejection emails?
Negotiating when my salary is low
Should I apply for jobs that require 5 years of experience?
Tricking applicant tracking systems
What else Oleg learned after interviewing 300 data scientists
How a horse's ass determined the design of a space shuttle
Links:
Oleg's service for interviews: https://nextround.cc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olegnovikov/
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Apr 30, 2021 • 57min
Effective Communication with Business for Data Professionals - Lior Barak
We talked about:
DataTalks.Club intro
Lior’s background
Who is a data strategist?
Improving communication between business and tech
Building trust
Putting data and business people together
Dealing with pushbacks
Building things in the lean way (and growing tomatoes)
Starting with ugly code
Convincing others to take our code
MVP vs development and Hummus
Talking to people who can’t code
Break down the silos
Hummus
Hummus places in Berlin
Lior’s book: Data is Like a Plate of Hummus
Data chaos
Links:
Book: https://www.amazon.com/-/en/Sarah-Mayor/dp/B086L277LZ (can be found on any amazon store)
Company: https://www.taleaboutdata.com/
Podcast: https://podcast.whatthedatapodcast.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liorbarak/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/liorb
Hummus places in Berlin:
Azzam: https://goo.gl/maps/uCkb3ATc5CVKapDa6
Akkawy: https://g.page/akkawy
The Eatery Berlin: https://g.page/theeateryberlin
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Apr 23, 2021 • 1h 2min
Data Observability - Barr Moses
We covered:
Barr’s background
Market gaps in data reliability
Observability in engineering
Data downtime
Data quality problems and the five pillars of data observability
Example: job failing because of a schema change
Three pillars of observability (good pipelines and bad data)
Observability vs monitoring
Finding the root cause
Who is accountable for data quality? (the RACI framework)
Service level agreements
Inferring the SLAs from the historical data
Implementing data observability
Data downtime maturity curve
Monte carlo: data observability solution
Open source tools
Test-driven development for data
Is data observability cloud agnostic?
Centralizing data observability
Detecting downstream and upstream data usage
Getting bad data vs getting unusual data
Links:
Learn more about Monte Carlo: https://www.montecarlodata.com/
The Data Engineer's Guide to Root Cause Analysis: https://www.montecarlodata.com/the-data-engineers-guide-to-root-cause-analysis/
Why You Need to Set SLAs for Your Data Pipelines: https://www.montecarlodata.com/how-to-make-your-data-pipelines-more-reliable-with-slas/
Data Observability: The Next Frontier of Data Engineering: https://www.montecarlodata.com/data-observability-the-next-frontier-of-data-engineering/
To get in touch with Barr, ping her in the DataTalks.Club group or use barr@montecarlodata.com
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Apr 16, 2021 • 1h 3min
Shifting Career from Analytics to Data Science - Andrada Olteanu
We talked about:
Andrada’s background
Recommended courses
Kaggle and StackOverflow
Doing notebooks on Kaggle
Projects for learning data science
Finding a job and a mentor with Kaggle’s help
The process for looking for a job
Main difficulties of getting a job
Project portfolio and Kaggle
Helpful analytical skills for transitioning into data science
Becoming better at coding
Learning by imitating
Is doing masters helpful?
Getting into data science without a masters
Kaggle is not just about competitions
The last tip: use social media
Links:
https://www.kaggle.com/andradaolteanu
https://twitter.com/andradaolteanuu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrada-olteanu-3806a2132/
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Apr 9, 2021 • 1h 4min
Transitioning from Project Management to Data Science - Ksenia Legostay
We talked about:
Knesia’s background
Data analytics vs data science
Skills needed for data analytics and data science
Benefits of getting a masters degree
Useful online courses
How project management background can be helpful for the career transition
Which skills do PMs need to become data analysts?
Going from working with spreadsheets to working with python
Kaggle
Productionizing machine learning models
Getting experience while studying
Looking for a job
Gap between theory and practice
Learning plan for transitioning
Last tips and getting involved in projects
Links:
Notes prepared by Ksenia with all the info: https://www.notion.so/ksenialeg/DataTalks-Club-7597e55f476040a5921db58d48cf718f
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Apr 2, 2021 • 1h 14min
Building Online Tech Communities - Demetrios Brinkmann
We talked about:
Demetrious’ background and starting the MLOps community
Growing MLOps community
Community moderations and dealing with problems
Becoming a community and connecting with people
Feeling belonged
Managing a community as an introvert
Keeping communities active
Doing custdev and talking to users
Random coffee and meeting with community members
Organizing community activities
Is community a business?
Five steps for starting a community in 2021
Shameless plug from Demetrious
Links:
https://mlops.community/
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Mar 26, 2021 • 1h 9min
DataOps 101 - Lars Albertsson
We talked about:
Lars’ career
Doing DataOps before it existed
What is DataOps
Data platform
Main components of the data platform and tools to implement it
Books about functional programming principles
Batch vs Streaming
Maturity levels
Building self-service tools
MLOps vs DataOps
Data Mesh
Keeping track of transformations
Lake house
Links:
https://www.scling.com/reading-list/
https://www.scling.com/presentations/
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html

Mar 19, 2021 • 1h 9min
The Essentials of Public Speaking for Career in Data Science - Ben Taylor
We talked about:
Ben’s background
AI evangelism
Ben’s first experiences speaking in public
Becoming a great speaker
Key Takeaways and Call to Action
Making a good introduction
Being Remembered
Writing a talk proposal for conferences
Landing a keynote
Good topics to start talks on
Pitching a solution talk to meetup organizers
Top public speaking skill to acquire
Book recommendations
Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html