Data Job is Not For Me — What to Do Next?
Data Job is Not For Me — What to Do Next?
What to do when you realize that a Data job is not for you.
What to do when you realize that a Data job is not for you.
You might see the news or the job application that mentions how much money people in the Data industry make.
You are interested in the industry prospect and start learning from all the online courses, youtube channels, articles, or even Bootcamp.
You learn about the data, statistics, and programming language, where many times and money are spent there.
You then realize that you might not be interested in the data work itself and only see the industry prospect. There is no joy when you are learning all the stuff related to the data work, and you only stay to learn even more just because so much time and money are invested in becoming a data scientist.
Maybe anybody familiar with this kind of story? This is a stressful condition but a realistic one.
In my experience, not everyone would enjoy working with the data. Even if it could grow over time, there are still many choices out there.
So, what to do when you realize that data work is not for you?
Accepting yourself
Before you do anything, make sure that you are certain to move on from the data field, even if it is just for a temporary time. It is not an embarrassment to realize that you do not feel your passion or just something you want to do. It is for your well-being, after all.
In my experience, there are few students I teach before who are trying out the data field, only to realize that it was not what they want to do in the long run. This makes them anxious and panic as they have sacrificed a lot of money, time, and energy to make it into the data field.
My first advice for my students who does not feel right in the data field is to “Feel okay with it and secure yourself.” Studying what you don’t like is just like working for a company you don’t like; you feel want to quit all the time.
If you still feel that it is not a right move to drop everything at once, try to give yourself time to distance yourself from the data field. You might know what you want after that.
Find your ”Right” Data Job
When you are learning about the data occupation, what you see is the glorification of AI or the Machine Learning Implementation within a big company. You see it and feels it would make a lot of money if you can work on that kind of job, just to realize that it was not for you.
Then maybe, just maybe, the data job you aim for is not the perfect data job for you. Your strength might be in the data job, but you see a different kind of data job. There are many kinds of data jobs, after all.
The easiest classification is Data Analyst, Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, and Data Scientist. These are the modern data job that were defined by many companies.
For example, I have previously learned many data science materials to realize that his passion is not creating a prediction machine learning but more to create a descriptive analysis from the available data and create an amazing dashboard. He might initially aim to become a Data Scientist but end up enjoying his work as a Data Analyst.
Open for Another Opportunity
While you already learn all the data science material and do not feel like it is what you want, it doesn't mean that all you learn is for naught. It is actually a material that you could apply for another employment opportunity.
I have known few people studying data science but do not necessarily want to become a Data Scientist or work in this field. They are learning data science to improve their understanding of their current job and getting better at what they did.
For example, I know a businessman learning data science to understand better the data presented to them and decide from the data. Another example is that my student from learning data science to become a web/application developer.
I suggest avoiding the thought that when you are learning data science, the working opportunity was only in the data field. Maybe you would not show the Python skill in your CV when applying for the marketing position, but the mindset is still in there.
Try to embrace what you actually enjoy doing and try to look for another opportunity. Then, try to apply what you have learned from data science learning to your own job. You might want to sit down and tweak your CV with what you have learned in data science and see what kind of skills suited another opportunity.
Conclusion
Finding a job in the data field is hard and even harder to give up after all the learning you have done. Sometimes we need to accept that this is not what we want to do and move on to do something that we really want.
My advice for people who feel the data job is not for them are:
Accepting Yourself
Find the “Right” Data Job
Open for Another Opportunity