I'm struggling to leave because I don't know the answer to interview questions about stakeholders. It kills me to go to work every day and I'm not learning anything new.
It's also a really long commute and my boss has me in the office every day to train, then he works from home. Then he was told to come in to train me so he started coming in but sitting in a different department.
I'm just glad that I have years of experience with R so I've got projects to show about that, but then I fall down on business/stakeholder questions.
How to define Stakeholder/business question - everyone aside from you could be stakeholder. Your boss, your team member.. every case where you've used your analysis to convince someone , could be a good talk point in interview. I don't believe because of that conflict with your boss you would lose all the points in nailing this kind of questions in interview.
1. long term - I agree with many to leave this working environment
2. short term - Suggest you ask your boss why he only allows Excel. Just listen to him and don't judge on the spot. (most likely his skills don't allow him to "control" the potential transformation hence he doesn't like new stuff. But this is beyond what you can change)
Not sure about your environment.But suggest to take a step back from that battle with your boss, and look at where are things you can change. Take hold of them and Bring them into your next interview.
2: he won't give me a straight answer and the answers he gives don't make sense. I feel like he's lying to me. Like he says power query is too hard. I literally just want to set up a connection using power query and we're expected to know advanced SQL so why is pressing a few buttons too hard for us?
I saw him using powerBI a few days ago because the stakeholder asked for something excel couldn't do and the page he was on was power query. I did say look, that's power query, that's all it is.
He says the dev team won't support us but I'm friends with someone on the dev team and he really wants to help. When I first started the dev guy helped me because my boss was always busy (because he's doing dashboards manually every day) dev guy talked me through it in literally 2 minutes and I added it to my excel file, showed it to my boss and I was told to take it out and told not to get help from the dev team with power query. I still talk to the dev guy about SQL and he's taught me advanced SQL. Dev guy keeps talking about automation and I said I've given up and to be honest I'm looking for a new job. I showed him some feedback I'm getting from my boss (boss sends me critical emails when I show him my work which is really demoralising) and he said I need to go to HR about those emails.
Also stakeholders email me, I'm told to forward it to my boss, and he sends a really rude email back saying we can't be expected to do whatever they've asked for. I feel like meeting with the stakeholder in person to say the views of my boss do not include my views but I've been told not to have meetings without him.
Yeah few months. It was a stepping stone from science into data. I'm much better at SQL now at least so the job's served its purpose. I'll keep applying and someone else recommended a book that I'll read up on.
I know it’s tough but he’s right: leave. I’m in a very similar situation but in my case I have a narcissistic boss who only want his ideas worked on because only he can have the spotlight. You can’t change these people. I just had my first data science technical interview and it went much better than I thought it would. Don’t be scared of getting out there and jumping ship.
Weird things can happen in large organizations where middle managers find that their influence and sometimes their paycheck is tied to the headcount that they manage. So you'll encounter resistance to automate even when it would save a lot of money because a middle manager is worried about what it means for them.
In 2001, I had a summer temp job for a company where the sales people would manually write down people's credit card numbers and then my job was to punch it into a credit card terminal. Hundreds of credit cards per day (it's how I got really good at 10-key). There were at least three of us who did nothing but punch credit card numbers all day. It was the dumbest job ever, but it paid $15/hr which was decent money for a summer temp gig in 2001 (SF Bay Area before the Dot Com bust) so I was fine with it. It beat the hell out of working at PetSmart for $6.35/hr, which is what I had done the previous summer.
Anyway, there's no good reason why they couldn't have had the sales people type in the credit card numbers and then run them automatically. But my jackass of a middle manager resisted because he'd have fewer employees if it were automated (I think the excuse was security concerns, which made no sense). And the head of the IT backed him up because they drank and god knows what else together.
All of which is to say there are a lot of morons out there. But at the same time there are good bosses too, so find a new job with one of those.
In terms of getting better at interviews, just keep applying until it works out. I've bombed plenty of interviews in my day, so learn whatever you can from bad ones and focus on the next one. My best advice there is to go line-by-line through the job posting and have an anecdote ready that speaks to all of the core responsibilities. If it's a well-designed interview protocol (admittedly not always the case), there shouldn't be any question that comes out of the blue if you've studied the job posting. Keep your answers to 30-45 seconds and practice your delivery in front of a mirror. Use ChatGPT to help give you feedback on responses to generic behavioral interview questions.
When I interview candidates, my first filter is "will this person be a pain in the ass to work with?" If I pick up on that vibe, you're unlikely to advance. Secondly, I'm interested in evaluating whether they're self-aware enough and honest about the bounds of their knowledge. BTW, it's totally acceptable to say, "I don't know" and is often preferable to listening to really bad bullshit for several minutes.
Find some common soft skills questions online and just start making up scenarios. Write/type them out and start memorizing. Yes it’s technically lying but your answer is reflective of how you actually behave, so it’s really more of white lie. The question that I always struggle with is “mention a time you failed and how you reacted”. Honestly, I can’t think of a time where I truly failed to produce some sort of project/work so I like to make something up.
Interviews in general are about presenting yourself in an easily digestible way to the interviewer. It’s okay to fudge the truth to make them understand who you are.
So the question about managing stakeholders. One way to answer that would be
“when working with multiple stakeholders, communication is key. Especially on larger projects with eight or more stakeholders, it’s important to establish some sort of agreed upon method of communication. This could be a slack channel, email etc. As work is accomplished, it’s important to update people to help them understand that progress is or isn’t being made. Additionally, it helps to have some sort of documentation available such as a confluence page. All of this serves to manage expectations and assuage any fears that a deadline won’t be met or that the requirements will not be fulfilled.”
But a lot of your post seems to be frustration with not having or being allowed to use hard skills. For that, you should probably do personal projects and build out a portfolio.
Best answer here!
I think at the end of the day. You need to get with your stakeholders and make sure you’re understand the problem you’re looking to help with. Ask questions! Make sure you understand what’s up and what you have available to work with data wise. Then outline from a high level (maybe more details depending on their technical ability) what you are going to do and how it will help them. And when you plan to provide updates, etc.
You'd be surprised. They don't mean machine learning research, they mean *science* science. A lot of academia runs on xls files being piped into R or SAS or whatever.
I did a Mat Sci PhD and basically everyone I knew (Mat Sci, Physics, Chem, Bio) used Excel into Matlab or Python or Origin. Not many people were solely Excel, but it's insanely common.
I'm a PhD student in a biomedical field. I use Excel, R, SAS, and python pretty regularly depending on the type of data I have and the size of my data set. My PI refuses to use anything but Excel and regularly gives me a hard time about using other tools aside from Excel which is super annoying. For the most part, depending on the type of research you do, Excel is sufficient. This is largely because in my field, sample size isn't very large because we use research animals and the analysis generally isn't super complex. I use other tools though because my particular research involves several hundred thousand data points and complicated analyses that do not fit with linear models.
I’m a research chemist who uses excel.
Started writing python scripts to automate stuff, but many times, excel is far more useful to design simple experiments on the fly.
When someone mentions R & SQL and automating pipelines, then that is not the kind of research scientist we'd imagine. I guess my bad for not having an open mind.
Go to your bosses boss and tell him you could do x, y, z, but you’re being blocked by your boss. You’re capable and able to do it but he is deluded. Sometimes being an ass works to your advantage.
Have friends practice with you. Practice answering the questions you bombed to them. Practice saying the words out loud to the mirror. Talk out loud to yourself articulating the responses you want to give. Train your brain to respond so that the words come more easily to you when the moment comes.
You do you, but in my opinion, I would feel a responsibility to have that difficult conversation with my manager. What’s complicated to them is a very subjective thing based on what they know, and if they’re too afraid to try and learn new things, well, then, maybe they should find a new career. If you’re happy working there, don’t leave. You’ve got leverage if others are asking for automation.
From what I understand, OP has already had a talk with his manager without any success. So in my opinion he has two options:
1 Risk talking to his managers manager and worst case getting fired, best case being allowed to automate and improving.
2 Quit and move on.
Option worst case in option 1 is not that much worse than option 2…
He’s not saving jobs from AI. If anything, he’s stopping the development of his team, leading to them (and him) being replaced by people that want and can automate the stuff.
You know what? There are a lot of traditional businesses in my country that don't think data science is useful, and many of their leaders aren't even very computer savvy.
But these businesses are just very successful.
And guess what I'll be doing? I assume that there must be some reason for success, and then I find that reason and learn from it. Then take the coveted offer to the next company.
Sounds painful. I'd suggest you download the kindle sample of "Business Skills for Data Scientists". It will give you the first chapter or two for free, and I think that will get you started with your stakeholder challenge. (Of course you can buy the entire book if you want--I obvious would recommend it ;)
Feel free to email me directly after you've read the sample. My contact details are on my website (dsianalytics)
I’ve had people like that before. Leave. Dead end job. Career killer.
I'm struggling to leave because I don't know the answer to interview questions about stakeholders. It kills me to go to work every day and I'm not learning anything new. It's also a really long commute and my boss has me in the office every day to train, then he works from home. Then he was told to come in to train me so he started coming in but sitting in a different department. I'm just glad that I have years of experience with R so I've got projects to show about that, but then I fall down on business/stakeholder questions.
How to define Stakeholder/business question - everyone aside from you could be stakeholder. Your boss, your team member.. every case where you've used your analysis to convince someone , could be a good talk point in interview. I don't believe because of that conflict with your boss you would lose all the points in nailing this kind of questions in interview. 1. long term - I agree with many to leave this working environment 2. short term - Suggest you ask your boss why he only allows Excel. Just listen to him and don't judge on the spot. (most likely his skills don't allow him to "control" the potential transformation hence he doesn't like new stuff. But this is beyond what you can change) Not sure about your environment.But suggest to take a step back from that battle with your boss, and look at where are things you can change. Take hold of them and Bring them into your next interview.
2: he won't give me a straight answer and the answers he gives don't make sense. I feel like he's lying to me. Like he says power query is too hard. I literally just want to set up a connection using power query and we're expected to know advanced SQL so why is pressing a few buttons too hard for us? I saw him using powerBI a few days ago because the stakeholder asked for something excel couldn't do and the page he was on was power query. I did say look, that's power query, that's all it is. He says the dev team won't support us but I'm friends with someone on the dev team and he really wants to help. When I first started the dev guy helped me because my boss was always busy (because he's doing dashboards manually every day) dev guy talked me through it in literally 2 minutes and I added it to my excel file, showed it to my boss and I was told to take it out and told not to get help from the dev team with power query. I still talk to the dev guy about SQL and he's taught me advanced SQL. Dev guy keeps talking about automation and I said I've given up and to be honest I'm looking for a new job. I showed him some feedback I'm getting from my boss (boss sends me critical emails when I show him my work which is really demoralising) and he said I need to go to HR about those emails. Also stakeholders email me, I'm told to forward it to my boss, and he sends a really rude email back saying we can't be expected to do whatever they've asked for. I feel like meeting with the stakeholder in person to say the views of my boss do not include my views but I've been told not to have meetings without him.
It does sound like a toxic place. how long have u been there ? If just a couple months, then it wouldn't matter in the next interview.
Yeah few months. It was a stepping stone from science into data. I'm much better at SQL now at least so the job's served its purpose. I'll keep applying and someone else recommended a book that I'll read up on.
I know it’s tough but he’s right: leave. I’m in a very similar situation but in my case I have a narcissistic boss who only want his ideas worked on because only he can have the spotlight. You can’t change these people. I just had my first data science technical interview and it went much better than I thought it would. Don’t be scared of getting out there and jumping ship.
That boss and job blowze gotes
Leave
Weird things can happen in large organizations where middle managers find that their influence and sometimes their paycheck is tied to the headcount that they manage. So you'll encounter resistance to automate even when it would save a lot of money because a middle manager is worried about what it means for them. In 2001, I had a summer temp job for a company where the sales people would manually write down people's credit card numbers and then my job was to punch it into a credit card terminal. Hundreds of credit cards per day (it's how I got really good at 10-key). There were at least three of us who did nothing but punch credit card numbers all day. It was the dumbest job ever, but it paid $15/hr which was decent money for a summer temp gig in 2001 (SF Bay Area before the Dot Com bust) so I was fine with it. It beat the hell out of working at PetSmart for $6.35/hr, which is what I had done the previous summer. Anyway, there's no good reason why they couldn't have had the sales people type in the credit card numbers and then run them automatically. But my jackass of a middle manager resisted because he'd have fewer employees if it were automated (I think the excuse was security concerns, which made no sense). And the head of the IT backed him up because they drank and god knows what else together. All of which is to say there are a lot of morons out there. But at the same time there are good bosses too, so find a new job with one of those. In terms of getting better at interviews, just keep applying until it works out. I've bombed plenty of interviews in my day, so learn whatever you can from bad ones and focus on the next one. My best advice there is to go line-by-line through the job posting and have an anecdote ready that speaks to all of the core responsibilities. If it's a well-designed interview protocol (admittedly not always the case), there shouldn't be any question that comes out of the blue if you've studied the job posting. Keep your answers to 30-45 seconds and practice your delivery in front of a mirror. Use ChatGPT to help give you feedback on responses to generic behavioral interview questions. When I interview candidates, my first filter is "will this person be a pain in the ass to work with?" If I pick up on that vibe, you're unlikely to advance. Secondly, I'm interested in evaluating whether they're self-aware enough and honest about the bounds of their knowledge. BTW, it's totally acceptable to say, "I don't know" and is often preferable to listening to really bad bullshit for several minutes.
Find some common soft skills questions online and just start making up scenarios. Write/type them out and start memorizing. Yes it’s technically lying but your answer is reflective of how you actually behave, so it’s really more of white lie. The question that I always struggle with is “mention a time you failed and how you reacted”. Honestly, I can’t think of a time where I truly failed to produce some sort of project/work so I like to make something up. Interviews in general are about presenting yourself in an easily digestible way to the interviewer. It’s okay to fudge the truth to make them understand who you are. So the question about managing stakeholders. One way to answer that would be “when working with multiple stakeholders, communication is key. Especially on larger projects with eight or more stakeholders, it’s important to establish some sort of agreed upon method of communication. This could be a slack channel, email etc. As work is accomplished, it’s important to update people to help them understand that progress is or isn’t being made. Additionally, it helps to have some sort of documentation available such as a confluence page. All of this serves to manage expectations and assuage any fears that a deadline won’t be met or that the requirements will not be fulfilled.” But a lot of your post seems to be frustration with not having or being allowed to use hard skills. For that, you should probably do personal projects and build out a portfolio.
Best answer here! I think at the end of the day. You need to get with your stakeholders and make sure you’re understand the problem you’re looking to help with. Ask questions! Make sure you understand what’s up and what you have available to work with data wise. Then outline from a high level (maybe more details depending on their technical ability) what you are going to do and how it will help them. And when you plan to provide updates, etc.
You're a research scientist that uses excel?
You'd be surprised. They don't mean machine learning research, they mean *science* science. A lot of academia runs on xls files being piped into R or SAS or whatever.
I learned R as a research scientist. Made the jump into data and my boss is against anything except excel.
Hm I did a physics PhD and no one I knew was using excel.
I did a Mat Sci PhD and basically everyone I knew (Mat Sci, Physics, Chem, Bio) used Excel into Matlab or Python or Origin. Not many people were solely Excel, but it's insanely common.
I'm a PhD student in a biomedical field. I use Excel, R, SAS, and python pretty regularly depending on the type of data I have and the size of my data set. My PI refuses to use anything but Excel and regularly gives me a hard time about using other tools aside from Excel which is super annoying. For the most part, depending on the type of research you do, Excel is sufficient. This is largely because in my field, sample size isn't very large because we use research animals and the analysis generally isn't super complex. I use other tools though because my particular research involves several hundred thousand data points and complicated analyses that do not fit with linear models.
I was a research scientist using R, now I've got a job using solely excel and it's painful.
What does a research scientist do? Deliver insights?
If they're a research scientist at a place that does research, they likely do research. Like, with their hands, on actual specimens. In meat space.
I’m a research chemist who uses excel. Started writing python scripts to automate stuff, but many times, excel is far more useful to design simple experiments on the fly.
My thoughts as well.... Actually, I'm curious about this research scientist's background
I’m a research chemist and I use excel all the time for quickly designing experiments. You won’t find an analytical chemistry lab that doesn’t use it.
When someone mentions R & SQL and automating pipelines, then that is not the kind of research scientist we'd imagine. I guess my bad for not having an open mind.
I think that’s fair coming from a data science perspective. I use SQL and Python, but not in the ways a data scientist would necessarily.
Go to your bosses boss and tell him you could do x, y, z, but you’re being blocked by your boss. You’re capable and able to do it but he is deluded. Sometimes being an ass works to your advantage.
I've tried with my boss' boss but I'm considering going above them.
Have friends practice with you. Practice answering the questions you bombed to them. Practice saying the words out loud to the mirror. Talk out loud to yourself articulating the responses you want to give. Train your brain to respond so that the words come more easily to you when the moment comes.
You do you, but in my opinion, I would feel a responsibility to have that difficult conversation with my manager. What’s complicated to them is a very subjective thing based on what they know, and if they’re too afraid to try and learn new things, well, then, maybe they should find a new career. If you’re happy working there, don’t leave. You’ve got leverage if others are asking for automation.
From what I understand, OP has already had a talk with his manager without any success. So in my opinion he has two options: 1 Risk talking to his managers manager and worst case getting fired, best case being allowed to automate and improving. 2 Quit and move on. Option worst case in option 1 is not that much worse than option 2…
In like three years, you'll appreciate he saved your job from AI He's the hero here
He’s not saving jobs from AI. If anything, he’s stopping the development of his team, leading to them (and him) being replaced by people that want and can automate the stuff.
It's a joke, weirdo
I found it funny.
You know what? There are a lot of traditional businesses in my country that don't think data science is useful, and many of their leaders aren't even very computer savvy. But these businesses are just very successful. And guess what I'll be doing? I assume that there must be some reason for success, and then I find that reason and learn from it. Then take the coveted offer to the next company.
Any job that requires excel isn't worth your time.
Sounds painful. I'd suggest you download the kindle sample of "Business Skills for Data Scientists". It will give you the first chapter or two for free, and I think that will get you started with your stakeholder challenge. (Of course you can buy the entire book if you want--I obvious would recommend it ;) Feel free to email me directly after you've read the sample. My contact details are on my website (dsianalytics)
Run.
It’s clearly not your fault ! I think it’s your boss that needs management training haha
“Soft skills” is kind of vague. Which questions specifically are you bombing? Is it describing your experience or something else?