- Hey, welcome back to Data Crunch
where we talk about the ABCD, AI, big data,
cloud computing, and data science,
and a lot more different things,
so, today, we will talk about
how to break into a tech career.
Not specifically, just for data science,
but a tech career, so a lot of people
have been talking about the digital transformation,
but I think the word digital transformation
is very cloudy.
There's a lot of misconceptions about it.
What really is digital transformation, Dr. Lau?
- This is something I love to do
is every time I am in a media camera
with some new buzzword, and my job is to
demystify the buzzword, for the general public,
usually, digital transformation is the process
where we move all from this paper stuff
into paperless stuff, so we record our information,
our data, into a form of databases,
and then you turn your assisting data points
into Excel spreadsheets, and digitalize
those forms into PDF forms, for example,
so I think all this can be considered
part of the process, part of the journey
to be considered as digital transformation.
- So a lot of this area is right,
what are most companies, in sense of businesses,
what, in sense of businesses, what are they
missing out most on?
- If you ask me, right, as a data scientist,
of course I would tell you it's data.
- Data.
- The thing about this, right,
everything that we are doing today
let's say from the food, we're eating off,
Food Panda.
- Food Panda.
- When you talk about transportation,
you'd be thinking?
- Transportation? Grab?
- Accommodation?
- AirBNB?
- Yeah, exactly, right, so all these different
you call it industries, or start-up companies,
or whatever you call that, right,
what is the only thing that is driving
the decision-making process behind?
- Data.
- Yeah, it can't be human, right,
because the amount of data is so huge
that we cannot rely on human computation power
to help them to make decisions,
and gone are the days where business owners,
even SME owners, right, you can't just rely
on something called gut feeling
or you cannot use the word I guess, I think so,
because the market is changing so fast
and you need to be able to rely on data and analytics
to make decisions to adapt to the changes
in the market.
- I think this reminds me of marketing
and so when it comes to digital marketing
a lot of us from the days of, you know,
gut feeling, thinking this will work or not,
we now look at data, look at analytics,
to actually find out what to do next.
But, in terms of digitalization
and transformation, right, so what kind of
in-demand skill-set should an individual
whether you are an entrepreneur,
or an individual, right, what should they learn?
- As a data scientist, people will always expect me
to give the standard answers that, you know,
learn how to programs in R or Python
or learn how to analyze the data
using different tools, or you need to have
mathematic skills and statistics skills,
but personally, I think, in the era
of digital transformation, on top of having those
hard skills and technical skills,
the skills that you need the most important one
is actually the business domain knowledge.
The ability to ask the right questions
in the right field.
- So, in one of the webinars that we ran
a few days ago, one of the major questions
that popped up is domain knowledge.
How do we get domain knowledge?
- Okay, now, usually in the past, right,
if you want to gain domain knowledge,
then you probably have to work in the industry
and, usually, the seniors would tell you
that you need to start from the lowest level,
and then climb your ladder up,
because you need to learn the processes
and work-flow thing in each part of the life-cycle
of the loop, so to speak, right?
But today, we have a lot of tools
that can help us to fast-track the process.
Now I'm not telling you that there is a shortcut,
but given the technologist thing about this,
there are three types of ways
that you can climb a ladder.
You can take the staircase,
you can take the escalator,
or you can take a lift, even, right?
So, I always believe that learning something,
up-scaling your skills, is one of the fastest ways
that you can progress in your career,
yeah, in an efficient manner.
- And I think we are blessed with
a lot of resources these days.
We have the internet, we have courses
over the internet, and there's lots
so much resources online,
that we can get this to up-skill ourselves
and learn more and more, right?
- Correct. Maybe you feel that this
is a bit vague, right, so let me give an example
that something that's out of the blue,
so, for example, I'm a data scientist
and you can see that I have a lot of experience
in text mining, in terms of analyzing unstructured data,
and also I have experience also analyzing hard data,
like sales data, retail data,
so today, let's say you give me a task
that I need to work in fashion analytics industry
so one of ours speaker in DM Summit that talk about it
So, I need to find out what is the best way
that I can quickly pick up all the
necessary terminologies and domain knowledge
about fashion analytics?
So the easiest way would be going to a conference,
listening to their speakers, to share about their
pinpoints, and to understand the culture
about how things are formed, and
try to think about why do they do things
in a specific ways, and the real values
that lies behind, it's not I can go to kaggle.com
and find any data set that's related to garment,
any data sets that's related to clothing and styles,
and find out this information that I want
even if there isn't any data set there,
that's related to, let's say, Malaysian market,
right, I can still go to Instagram
and script the data using API to find out
what are the different types of hashtags
that Malaysians start to use
when they talk about OOTD, right,
and then from there, I can do a lot of analysis
on the different style of clothings,
the colors, whether they like shirts
or they like shorts or they like denims,
all sort of things that I can file from that,
so I think it's a matter of taking your first steps
to jump into the industry and start to learn
- Learning what's in an industry,
from those resources, and getting creative for
where you get your data sources from
and stuff to work on.
- Yeah, but if you ask me, right,
I would have the same question for you, right?
As a digital marketer, you must be dealing with
there's no clients for digital marketing, right?
So you must have clients from different industries,
so let's say, if any example that you can share with us
if some, if you are jumping into a new industry
that you have never done before?
- I think for digital marketing,
one of the best ways to learn marketing
is to actually do it.
But how, right?
So the question is how.
Now, one of the questions is if you
cannot get, let's say, a client,
to do marketing for the certain client,
one of the best ways to do,
is to go into FM marketing, because
as an FM marketer, you are a marketer,
but you are actually promoting
someone else's product.
Now, that product or service can be
in different types of domains and
different types of industries.
It could be fashion industry.
It could be a software.
It could be a course.
It could be anything at all.
But when you do it, you're actually learning
the domain of that product, so is...
- So, with that said, right, you actually save
a lot of time, or, I can call it
a short-circuit process, from let's say R&D,
developing a product, because that product
is a proven product.
Somebody else has already done the research
and they know that what the markets demand is,
and if they have a very minimum understanding
about what people want.
- And when you work on these marketing projects
that you have not done before,
you actually learn the different types
of audience sentiments, the different types
of marketing with these different type of domains, as well,
so I think that's one of the best ways
for a marketer to pick up domain knowledge.
So, I'm going to reverse a little bit, right,
so, when it comes to digital transformation,
or to break into a tech career,
the subject of programming comes up a lot, right,
so do you think that everyone
should learn how to program?
- Okay, now, everyone should learn how to program
but not necessarily everybody needs
to become a programmer.
There's a slight difference between these two, right.
So, gone are the days where people say
that, you know, you must learn English
because you need to be able to connect
with the international market, for example.
For the same analogy, today, if you want
to be able to manage the machines
and communicate with all the different devices
in the future, remember, we always talk about this,
right, with 5G is coming in the very near future,
actually, it's already on it's way to arrive, right,
so when we have 5Gs, we have a lot of
inter-connected devices, not only your watches,
your mobile phones, your TVs,
very soon you will be able to write scripts
to manipulate, for example, your oven, right,
your washing machine, and your fridge, for example.
So, with all those things that are in place,
programming language, or your ability
to write programs, has become a core skills
for you to communicate with those devices.
Now, you can - yeah, exactly, right?
So, for example, you want to be able to,
let's talk about something that everybody can relate.
Let's use Instagram as an example.
I found five hashtags that I'm particularly interested
and I want to be able to crawl,
or collect information images
about these five hashtags every 15 minutes.
So how can I do this?
The only way that I can do that
is to write a program using a very simple script
that is able to help me do that, right?
So, same thing, if you want to be able to
configure your washing machine
to do some task for you, you want to
configure your CCTVs to do some feedback,
or alerts for you, you can use a similar technology
and similar techniques to do that.
- Right. You're talking about the possibility
of using your own programs to connect
with all your different appliances and things at home.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so that's programming, right,
but in terms of programming, uh,
those kinds of things I mentioned,
program your CCTV to talk to you,
what is recommended language, or recommended pathway
or starting point for people?
- Yeah, people will think that I will
once again recommend you learn things
like, you know, Python, or R to start with.
Actually, it doesn't really matter
what sort of programming language
that you learn at the very beginning,
because what you really need to do
is to understand how a human should communicate
with a computer, so you need to understand
the concepts of variables, you need to
understand the concept of data structures,
how do your store datas, how do you store
different objects, object-oriented programmings,
of course the logics, using loops,
and if/or statements, for example.
If these things are too far-fetched,
or too out of reach for you, right,
you have to remember that in the future
what is really important is mobile
and web applications, right,
because we're seeing less and less people
using desktop for doing their work,
except for like typing, or using spreadsheets,
but a lot of them, a lot of the tasks
are slowly replaced by mobile applications,
for example, you're not going to use a laptop
to take a photo, right?
You're going to use a laptop to edit a photo,
but if you want to take a photo,
upload it, caption it, most of the time
you'll be using mobile applications.
A lot of business applications
actually happening in real time.
For example, you're booking a cab,
you're checking your AirBNB accommodations,
you're trying to call somebody,
so all these systems are actually built
on top a web application, so if I were to recommend
somebody to learn a programming language,
learn something that has high value in web,
so that could be Java Script,
that could be PHP, or of course,
you could learn something like Python, as well.
- All right, so you're recommending people
to learn a programming language that,
for devices, and for platforms that most people
are in, their attention is inside those platforms.
In fact, some regions,
like Indonesia, some people who are born there,
are not born, the first device they use
to connect to the internet is not a desktop.
But it's a mobile phone.
- Correct.
- So, out of that, the most important two things
would be the web and also mobile.
- If you go to any of the restaurants
in Malaysia, right, it doesn't matter
fast food restaurants or any of the restaurants,
you can see that a lot of babies,
they are not even using mobile phones anymore.
They start out with I-pads.
Yeah, so that's the first ever, I'm not saying
the first ever mobile device,
that's the first ever device they get to learn
so they are very well-versed in touching,
they're very well-versed in pinching,
they're very well-versed with different types of gestures.
And, on a mobile device.
- All right, so we'll come back with more
on how to break into a tech career
after the break.
- All right, welcome back.
- All right, welcome back.
Now, Reuben, I have talked a lot on tech,
I have talked a lot on data, about programming, right.
But something that I would like to file from you
is that those things that I mentioned
are really just hard tech, right, hard technologies,
and hard skills, basically, but what if somebody
that's our audience, who are not really
who wants to enter a tech career,
but they are not really into, you know,
programming, or analyzing numbers,
is there any other career path
or any other occupations that they can opt for
and enter a tech career?
- So I think that's an interesting question,
so I think that, uh, there's many opportunities
for the tech industry as well,
so not necessarily everyone entering tech
would want to do programming or technical stuff, right,
and why there's this rise of a lot of
different types of roles, for example, like,
recently, with one of our instructors, Sina,
he talks about AI product management,
so it's like product management,
but with a layer of AI.
So an AI product manager, those are technical parts,
but he does not necessarily does the coding.
He manages the project, he manages the product.
- So that actually reminds me of something like
the, people call it the slash path, right?
The slash career path or some,
I use to call it the t-shift career path.
I think Sina put it in a more interest way,
he called it a com, yeah,
somebody with a broad understanding
of a particular layer that he's able
to specialize in a few skills,
but in your case, right, digital marketing,
have you seen anything that is similar to this?
And, because, I think for our audience, as well,
right, a lot of the students that we have taught,
is that the younger generation
they might be worried about is this
the right career path that they should begin with,
because right now everything seems like
you know, flourishing, it is booming,
but, is there an end to the tech career,
or how should they pick the right career to enter.
- So, speaking about the marketing industry,
you always see two sides of the spectrum, right.
So one is the tech people, the tech marketers,
right, so they are very good at the algorithms,
the targeting, the technical details, right,
and then we have the other side of the spectrum,
which are people who are,
they are good at marketing, but they do not
necessarily have the skills for the tech part
the programming part, the pixilation part,
and all that, but we find that normally
for marketers in this industry, right now,
the best point to be is on the middle
in the middle, so someone who knows
the programming part, technical part,
and can mix his knowledge
from the marketing portion, as well.
For that makes a very all-round marketer
who understand the landscape that we have today,
The tech landscape today.
- Okay, I think from my point of view,
is that we should always look at things
from the point of view, we shouldn't, yeah, but
people always look at things from their own eye
meaning that what is a return of investment.
So, for example, in our certification courses,
they always ask is this question going to be
on the exam, and stuff, but you know
that in real life it doesn't work that way, right.
So, what are your recommendations in real life,
if somebody wants to learn how to, yeah.
- So, I think a lot of people today
are looking for shortcuts, right,
we see that a lot about, but we try
to encourage them not to do it that way.
Some people come to certification programs
and say, "What is the minimum requirement stuff
to get a certificate?"
Because that's all they want to be able
to, you know, get a job or get a career,
but, actually, when it comes to work,
it is more than that, right?
When it comes to work, you know you,
the things that you learn is beyond a certificate,
a piece of paper.
There are so many things that you have to,
you know, think about, put inside,
so I think it's more than just a shortcut.
I think people have to learn broadly, right,
so if you're a marketer, for example,
you don't want to think and ground yourself
to just marketing.
You want to put a leg out there
to learn a bit about programming, as well,
to understand how programming works
and to come out with more branches of knowledge.
So, back to that com, again.
- Yep.
Okay.
All right, we have discussed about
basically three different types of career options
that you can have if you want to enter a tech career.
So you can either look at data science career path,
but not necessarily you want
to become a data scientist
but you can become a data analyst,
data engineers, and also machine learning engineer,
for example.
On the other hand, you should also
pick up some skills that's related to programming.
Ideally, to make sure that you're future-proof.
You should learn something that
is more web-related, like Java Script, Python,
or even some other programming languages
as long as they are more robust
and more related to web, like for example, PHP.
Now, on the other hand, if you are not so tech-savvy,
then you can look into different types
of soft skills, for example, product management,
but in the context of technology,
such as using AI, and of course,
digital marketing, which I think that is
always a demand for digital marketers
in the long run, right.
Before we end the video,
any other advice from Reuben?
- Advice from me?
Well, I think if you were to ask an advice on me,
don't be clouded with just one,
you know, one kind of subject to learn.
I think that the person today, or the individual
should learn a few subjects, because, let's face it,
right, the shelf-life of our education
is very short, and we constantly find ourselves
needing to learn new skills
every four to five years in today's tech industry
and industry itself.
- Yeah.
Okay, all right, if you have any questions
related to tech related career,
feel free to leave it in the comments section.
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All right, thank you very much
and we'll see you in the next video.
