#66DaysofData Member Spotlight: Jack (of all trades)

This is the first in a weekly series spotlighting different members of the 66DaysofData discord community, an initiative started by data scientist and YouTuber Ken Jee. You can find out more about the initiative here and here. The intent of this series is to celebrate those who have made it through the challenge already (although it never truly ends!); share their stories; learn from their successes and failures; and hopefully inspire anybody else walking this path, wherever you happen to be in your journey. If you’re interested in joining the community, you can do so here.

Psychologist, behavioural economist, entrepreneur, avid reader and learner… and data scientist. We all decide to pursue data science for different reasons. For Jack Raifer Baruch, it was almost out of necessity in his quest to better understand company cultures. A psychologist by training (with not one, but two Masters degrees), he and his wife started Cultura 52 in 2015 to help organizations looking to change and improve their culture. Jack eventually realized that any robust framework would require a better understanding of data and data science.

This was my first key takeaway from our conversation:

You really need to understand the reason you’re trying to get into data science — other than because you think it’s cool.

Having a larger and deeper motivation will raise the level of your commitment to learning. This was not the first time Jack had tried on the data science hat; he’d briefly engaged the field once before and it just didn’t stick because it wasn’t purposeful. This time, with a focus on people analytics (and assisted by a global pandemic), it’s been full steam ahead; according to him, 80% of everything he’s learned about data science has been in the last year. (Why didn’t anybody tell him about violin plots sooner?!)

This is where 66 Days of Data plays a part too. True to the premise of the challenge, Jack credits the initiative with helping him form and build a habit of taking consistent action toward acquiring data science skills. He found he was lacking in Python programming skills so in the first round of the 66 Days of Data, that’s what he focused on. In the second round, he’s focused on becoming a better communicator by writing his Road to Data Science series.

This was my second key takeaway:

Focus, but don’t fixate. Learn broadly, but not all at once. Have patience.

There seems to be an inherent conflict, especially early on, between knowing enough things and knowing enough about any one thing. When you’re new to any field, everything looks exciting and it’s natural to have Shiny Object Syndrome. Take advantage of it! You’ll likely find some areas within the domain more interesting than others. Give yourself the freedom to discover them. Knowledge and skills are interconnected and don’t exist in isolation anyway. However, when you find something you like or that seems crucially important, take the time to focus and build up a foundation of functional knowledge in that area. You don’t need to be an expert to start, but you do need to know enough.

Jack had a lot more advice for any newcomers to the field, including:

• Do the hard stuff in the morning, when you’re probably freshest. Corollary: Recognize when you’re no longer productive and give yourself permission to take a break (or to stop for the day).
• If the university style of learning works for you, you’ll love Coursera (he’s got 20+ specializations listed on his LinkedIn!).
• Plan and complete your projects with the expectation that they’ll create real value for somebody, not just to show off a skill. Companies are hiring you for your impact, not your algorithms and accuracy scores.

As a man of many interests, he’s also started two more ventures after Cultura 52. In 2019, he founded Ada Intelligence, almost as a complement to Cultura 52. Where Cultura 52 focuses more on the macro by reshaping organizational cultures, Ada Intelligence focuses more on the micro by building people’s socio-emotional skills through the lens of psychology, amplified by the power of data science and machine learning. The timing could not have been more perfect, with COVID-19 right around the corner. What better time to learn self-regulation, empathy, resilience, perseverance and adaptability?

He’s also launched his DATApreneurs initiative earlier this month as a community for data-focused entrepreneurs. Officially, this is a new initiative, but in reality, it’s just the culmination of years of work supporting and coaching entrepreneurs. If this is something that interests you, you can join the DATApreneurs discord server for inspiration and to collaborate with other members trying to make a positive impact in the world.

I learned a lot from our conversation and walked away inspired to keep reading and growing, so he’s already made a positive impact on at least one person today.

You can read more from Jack Raifer Baruch on LinkedIn, on Twitter or on Medium. He’s also recently done a talk for Data Science GO Connect about his journey, starting from the very beginning. If you want to hear him in real time, you’ll get another chance in April during Open Data Science’s virtual conference!

Finally, if you’d like to join a community of data science learners in all stages of the journey, feel free to join the 66DaysofData discord server.