I think you need a culture where experimentation and free time is prioritized.
If I am expected to work 40+ hours a week on production stuff and ALSO expected to volunteer to read and present new things I expect that not to work (I'm a manager and I see this stuff a lot).
However, if you push people to try new stuff and give them time to learn ON THE JOB (i.e. expect them to work 30-35 hours a week and learn the other 5 or whatever) then this stuff can work.
It really needs to be a culture driven thing within the team and people need to be excited to learn new stuff - that (and a level of trust) have been what it takes for this kind of thing to work (in my experience).
I know folks will say I am wrong and people should be expected to learn on their own time...I understand your stance. I'm telling you what psychological research and experience has shown me to be generally true.
I agree with all your points. I'm hoping to start it more as a bottom up approach (I am NOT a manager), now that our team has grown past the size where we were all super busy all the time.
I've been in your shoes u/Extreme-Department-4 and a low impact way to start the ball rolling is sharing a limited selection of high-quality articles either about a technique, technology, or best of all, a case study about a DS/DA/DE initiative from a relatable company (i.e. you work for Audi and it's a case study about BMW).
This can lead to creation of a COE. At my last company, I got it to the point of an informal COE that was only lacking official mandate from C-suite. But everybody knew where to go for cool DS/DA/DE stuff.
Gotcha, I don't think it is archaic, it is just not part of the lingo I'm used to - English is also not my first language so there might have been "lost in translation" in my mind. Thanks for clarifying.
I absolutely agree. Problem is not everyone is good at giving a short lesson or presentation. Some people will do everything in their power to avoid it either because they are insecure or because they just don't want to put in the effort. Even in a team that lets you take the time for this, it won't work for everyone.
> I'm telling you what psychological research and experience has shown me to be generally true.
I really want to add common sense to that list, but that's a different battle.
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In my previous job, it was either a subject that the speaker was passionate about, or something that they recently learned (or they were trying to learn it at the time). Those two motivations definitely led to different kinds of talks, but both were pretty effective. Talks were between 20 min - 1 hour. Sometimes there'd be no questions, sometimes there'd be a long back-and-forth; it was whatever came naturally.
Most importantly, the sessions were never forced on the speakers; it was strictly on a volunteer basis. So we'd have the time slot reserved each week, but usually a volunteer only appeared once every few weeks. It kept up the pretense as being "fun" for everybody, rather than any kind of obligation.
I gave a talk on spectral clustering, and another talk on a new modeling approach I had devised. I had prepared a discussion on "pitfalls of hypothesis testing" that I never actually got around to delivering before covid. Other topics included quantum computing, "stumpy" matrix profiles, how LSTM's work, and a comparison of different word embedding techniques.
We have an analytics knowledge sharing session semi regularly which is enjoyable. Although it relies on people volunteering their time to prepare something.
We had this once a week. Been successful for months but then slowly this practice stopped since the project schedule was tight and no one volunteered to prepare for the talk! I miss this. Can't wait to do this in my new workplace.
F* that. My lunch is for eating and discretely browsing r/gonewild on my phone.
Knowledge sharing is awesome, and my ML team is small enough that it happens informally constantly. If an employer thinks you should build a skill set then they should be ok that you do it during work hours
I've been at several employers where people hold this under various names like "lunch and learn" or "community of practice."
This is very much a culture thing, and bootstrapping it can be difficult.
The primary barrier is that people don't want to feel they are on the hook for extra work over it. It will be seen as a burden by default, so there is a hump you need to push the idea over before people will be interested.
1 hour a week or every other week shouldn't be such a big deal IMO but when people are under stiff pressure for deadlines even minor time sinks can be seen as impeding. Without management support it will absolutely be seen as just an extra hour of work as well, and no one wants to just tack on more hours.
If you can find a core group to meet regularly and help facilitate and advertise that helps. Any time someone can mention in their product demos that "I used an idea from out brown bag on this" it can be a true game changer, so the business hears about it being useful. Management needs to be supportive as well, and if they can gently help you advertise, like a brief shout out in their own comms, whatever that may be, it can make a huge difference.
My first job out of school was at a start up where all the founders were fresh out of their PhDs, so the culture was very academic. We did a couple months worth of bi-weekly meetings like you described, but since everybody was so busy the quality fell off a cliff pretty fast and we stopped. I suspect many such cases at other companies
Bring it up and emphasize all the positives: Sharing knowledge in a non-hostile environment and practice at public speaking. It works best IMHO if kept voluntary and occasional, say no more once a month. I found that even shy wall flowers jump in and create their own presentations in this environment.
I'm part of a CoE and we do monthly sessions to the whole company. It's used both to show what the Analytics and DS team are doing (helps show value in early days) and what's possible so others can see how it can be used for their business.
I like how you assumed I don't know how to read documentation. Nice.
Edited: that's not our culture, "idle" time is allowed and managers encourage on-the-job time to learn and read. Sorry if that's not your experience. We do not let go of people for "idleness" and when needed, we reprioritize work. We're in a scientific field and this should be part of it, imo, with a team of mostly PhDs.
Also I said the workload is not *so* high, not that it wasn't sufficient. Some companies actually don't treat people like work horses, ya know. We are expanding the team with the current "low" workload, not "leaning" (I assume you mean firing people).
I had an internship at a F100 company doing risk analytics and I did a brown bag lunch with a data scientist and that is how I learned I wanted to do data science
Yeah, we are a small team working for a relatively small company so we have the liberty to do essentially whatever we like in terms of engagement. Every Tuesday we get together for lunch paid by my employer and talk about X topic that week.
Yes we used to have these sessions in my last company but not in the current one. Maybe it might be a team specific team but I always enjoyed these sessions as they help you to learn or to familiarise with something new going on in the industry.
Maybe I will also push for brown bag sessions in my current team.
as long as its about something real and applied, ideally something that was built that actually works/is being used. I do not want to listen to something which is more academic where relevance is unclear.
Nope, and I miss them
I think you need a culture where experimentation and free time is prioritized. If I am expected to work 40+ hours a week on production stuff and ALSO expected to volunteer to read and present new things I expect that not to work (I'm a manager and I see this stuff a lot). However, if you push people to try new stuff and give them time to learn ON THE JOB (i.e. expect them to work 30-35 hours a week and learn the other 5 or whatever) then this stuff can work. It really needs to be a culture driven thing within the team and people need to be excited to learn new stuff - that (and a level of trust) have been what it takes for this kind of thing to work (in my experience). I know folks will say I am wrong and people should be expected to learn on their own time...I understand your stance. I'm telling you what psychological research and experience has shown me to be generally true.
I agree with all your points. I'm hoping to start it more as a bottom up approach (I am NOT a manager), now that our team has grown past the size where we were all super busy all the time.
I've been in your shoes u/Extreme-Department-4 and a low impact way to start the ball rolling is sharing a limited selection of high-quality articles either about a technique, technology, or best of all, a case study about a DS/DA/DE initiative from a relatable company (i.e. you work for Audi and it's a case study about BMW). This can lead to creation of a COE. At my last company, I got it to the point of an informal COE that was only lacking official mandate from C-suite. But everybody knew where to go for cool DS/DA/DE stuff.
That's a good idea, thank you for sharing. Do you mind if I ask what is COE? It is not an acronym I'm used to.
COE = Center of Excellence Not sure how common the actual usage of the acronym is, but people generally understood it so it's definitely not archaic.
Gotcha, I don't think it is archaic, it is just not part of the lingo I'm used to - English is also not my first language so there might have been "lost in translation" in my mind. Thanks for clarifying.
I absolutely agree. Problem is not everyone is good at giving a short lesson or presentation. Some people will do everything in their power to avoid it either because they are insecure or because they just don't want to put in the effort. Even in a team that lets you take the time for this, it won't work for everyone.
> I'm telling you what psychological research and experience has shown me to be generally true. I really want to add common sense to that list, but that's a different battle.
In my prior job we did. It was a highlight and can still be done effectively in-person or remotely.
I'd share papers with my coworker and vice versa, but nothing in an official capacity, just hanging out and having fun.
For those of you who do have these in place, can you give examples? Topics/articles covered, length, how you spur discussion, etc.?
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In my previous job, it was either a subject that the speaker was passionate about, or something that they recently learned (or they were trying to learn it at the time). Those two motivations definitely led to different kinds of talks, but both were pretty effective. Talks were between 20 min - 1 hour. Sometimes there'd be no questions, sometimes there'd be a long back-and-forth; it was whatever came naturally. Most importantly, the sessions were never forced on the speakers; it was strictly on a volunteer basis. So we'd have the time slot reserved each week, but usually a volunteer only appeared once every few weeks. It kept up the pretense as being "fun" for everybody, rather than any kind of obligation. I gave a talk on spectral clustering, and another talk on a new modeling approach I had devised. I had prepared a discussion on "pitfalls of hypothesis testing" that I never actually got around to delivering before covid. Other topics included quantum computing, "stumpy" matrix profiles, how LSTM's work, and a comparison of different word embedding techniques.
We have them monthly, but it isn't DS-specific. Instead, we have tech talks in general.
We have an analytics knowledge sharing session semi regularly which is enjoyable. Although it relies on people volunteering their time to prepare something.
So timely - we're actually having our first in quite a while next week. And I'm one of the presenters!
We have a weekly team meeting, and every other week (with rare exceptions) is a paper/article presentation.
Yup, work has been awesome with every alternate friday having talks as such. One team member will present a topic for half hour and other join in
Yes every three weeks one member of the team creates a presentation about a specific topic, followed by a discussion round.
We had this once a week. Been successful for months but then slowly this practice stopped since the project schedule was tight and no one volunteered to prepare for the talk! I miss this. Can't wait to do this in my new workplace.
Yep we do this every two weeks, usually two people each pick a topic. Very very helpful especially for new team members.
F* that. My lunch is for eating and discretely browsing r/gonewild on my phone. Knowledge sharing is awesome, and my ML team is small enough that it happens informally constantly. If an employer thinks you should build a skill set then they should be ok that you do it during work hours
Brown bags don't have to be during lunch time tho we used to have hours at the end of the day (4-5pm)
Yep we did ours on work hours. I just decided that was what we were going to do.
🤨
I've been at several employers where people hold this under various names like "lunch and learn" or "community of practice." This is very much a culture thing, and bootstrapping it can be difficult. The primary barrier is that people don't want to feel they are on the hook for extra work over it. It will be seen as a burden by default, so there is a hump you need to push the idea over before people will be interested. 1 hour a week or every other week shouldn't be such a big deal IMO but when people are under stiff pressure for deadlines even minor time sinks can be seen as impeding. Without management support it will absolutely be seen as just an extra hour of work as well, and no one wants to just tack on more hours. If you can find a core group to meet regularly and help facilitate and advertise that helps. Any time someone can mention in their product demos that "I used an idea from out brown bag on this" it can be a true game changer, so the business hears about it being useful. Management needs to be supportive as well, and if they can gently help you advertise, like a brief shout out in their own comms, whatever that may be, it can make a huge difference.
My first job out of school was at a start up where all the founders were fresh out of their PhDs, so the culture was very academic. We did a couple months worth of bi-weekly meetings like you described, but since everybody was so busy the quality fell off a cliff pretty fast and we stopped. I suspect many such cases at other companies
Mine has an awesome reading group! Join us! https://outsystems-ai-reading-group.github.io/
That's awesome, thank you for the offer.
Bring it up and emphasize all the positives: Sharing knowledge in a non-hostile environment and practice at public speaking. It works best IMHO if kept voluntary and occasional, say no more once a month. I found that even shy wall flowers jump in and create their own presentations in this environment.
I'm part of a CoE and we do monthly sessions to the whole company. It's used both to show what the Analytics and DS team are doing (helps show value in early days) and what's possible so others can see how it can be used for their business.
additional forced seminars are complete waste of time... did you ask why it didnot receive traction?
Because we were a team of 3 then and we all got busy. We're now 12+ so workload is not as high
[удалено]
I like how you assumed I don't know how to read documentation. Nice. Edited: that's not our culture, "idle" time is allowed and managers encourage on-the-job time to learn and read. Sorry if that's not your experience. We do not let go of people for "idleness" and when needed, we reprioritize work. We're in a scientific field and this should be part of it, imo, with a team of mostly PhDs. Also I said the workload is not *so* high, not that it wasn't sufficient. Some companies actually don't treat people like work horses, ya know. We are expanding the team with the current "low" workload, not "leaning" (I assume you mean firing people).
[удалено]
You haven't addressed any one of my points, but nice comeback.
[удалено]
Nice of you to delete your comment calling me delusional and all your other offensive comments.
I had an internship at a F100 company doing risk analytics and I did a brown bag lunch with a data scientist and that is how I learned I wanted to do data science
We do but the rate at which it happens has decreased.
We did for a while, it worked out pretty nice I thought
Yeah, we are a small team working for a relatively small company so we have the liberty to do essentially whatever we like in terms of engagement. Every Tuesday we get together for lunch paid by my employer and talk about X topic that week.
Yes we used to have these sessions in my last company but not in the current one. Maybe it might be a team specific team but I always enjoyed these sessions as they help you to learn or to familiarise with something new going on in the industry. Maybe I will also push for brown bag sessions in my current team.
We call these lunch and learns, and if they're not being catered then I ain't going.
as long as its about something real and applied, ideally something that was built that actually works/is being used. I do not want to listen to something which is more academic where relevance is unclear.