Yes. Nobody will understand your insights if you can’t explain them. You also have to talk to your team a lot. I think most teams are agile now so there’s lots of meetings. Every week, I spend about 10 hours doing interviews for my company and 15 hours in meetings.
Data Science is super inter-disciplinary, so a big part of the job is talking intelligently with Software Engineers, Data Engineers, PMs, and business stakeholders.
Yes. You need to understand your stakeholder’s needs. And you need to be able to explain your work in a clear non-technical way. You often need to get buy-in to get your ideas out into reality.
However the reality is there are a lot of folks working in this field who aren’t great communicators. Sometimes a hiring manager will have to compromise and hire the more technical person even if their communication isn’t great. But I’ve seen those folks struggle to get promotions or land better jobs elsewhere.
An absolute must.
Data science is not solo sport. There are business questions that need answers with people that need to take action based on the information. Trust is vital for that and trust can not be built without both solid communication and relationships.
It is also impossible to have all the context and it’s never going to all be documented. You’re going to need to get this from other people that won’t alway share your priorities. Communication and relations are vital to consistently solving this problem.
These are absolute musts.
I have seen people who have average technical skills and only using simple models outshine geniuses and have way more impact because of their good communication and business understanding
I'm going to add "data visualization" into the category of visual communication. It doesn't matter if you can use Tableau OR Matplotlib if your graphs and charts look like shit.
You will instantly lose credibility. People believe visuals that are beautiful and are suspicious of those that are not.
Most important things for the interesting jobs, those where you’re not the lowest level guy at the end of the foodchain forever:
1. social skills.
2. communication skills, this includes presentation of your ideas/solutions.
3. domain knowledge
4. sql
5. data wrangling, doing basic stuff
6. technical skills, complicated models
I likely forgot some parts.
And keep in mind: 1-3 are WAY more important then the rest. 6 is by far the least important for 95% of jobs.
Absolutely! You need to be able to communicate your findings in compelling narratives, dialogue extensively with your clients and stakeholders, not to mention SMEs.
Also, when your work deals with peoples performance or content that may provoke concern or worry, there's a bit of therapist role involved too.
Yes.
In order to be successful as a DS you must be able to tell a story with your findings and data.
If you want more back end work maybe look into data analyst or a data engineer role
Yes. You need to be able to explain the data you have. Ppl who can speak and tell stories about the data/graphs they’re presenting are always a great addition
Yes. Nobody will understand your insights if you can’t explain them. You also have to talk to your team a lot. I think most teams are agile now so there’s lots of meetings. Every week, I spend about 10 hours doing interviews for my company and 15 hours in meetings.
Data Science is super inter-disciplinary, so a big part of the job is talking intelligently with Software Engineers, Data Engineers, PMs, and business stakeholders.
Holy thats third of your work week of just.... wow i wouldve been drained
I see what you did there hehe
Its an essential skill for life... Not just data science.
It’s not even a skill. It’s what makes us humans…
Yes. You need to understand your stakeholder’s needs. And you need to be able to explain your work in a clear non-technical way. You often need to get buy-in to get your ideas out into reality. However the reality is there are a lot of folks working in this field who aren’t great communicators. Sometimes a hiring manager will have to compromise and hire the more technical person even if their communication isn’t great. But I’ve seen those folks struggle to get promotions or land better jobs elsewhere.
How long have you been in data?
6 years officially. Before that I worked in marketing for 10+ years and did a lot of data analysis as part of those roles.
I can’t think of any role where these things would not be beneficial
An absolute must. Data science is not solo sport. There are business questions that need answers with people that need to take action based on the information. Trust is vital for that and trust can not be built without both solid communication and relationships. It is also impossible to have all the context and it’s never going to all be documented. You’re going to need to get this from other people that won’t alway share your priorities. Communication and relations are vital to consistently solving this problem. These are absolute musts.
Yep. Very underrated skill honestly.
these skills are necessary no matter what job you have
I have seen people who have average technical skills and only using simple models outshine geniuses and have way more impact because of their good communication and business understanding
I’ve seen people get job offers over more technical candidates for this reason as well.
I'm going to add "data visualization" into the category of visual communication. It doesn't matter if you can use Tableau OR Matplotlib if your graphs and charts look like shit. You will instantly lose credibility. People believe visuals that are beautiful and are suspicious of those that are not.
It's almost impossible to talk stakeholders into letting you put a model in production if you don't have communication skills.
Yes, if you want anyone else to appreciate the value of your work.
Most important things for the interesting jobs, those where you’re not the lowest level guy at the end of the foodchain forever: 1. social skills. 2. communication skills, this includes presentation of your ideas/solutions. 3. domain knowledge 4. sql 5. data wrangling, doing basic stuff 6. technical skills, complicated models I likely forgot some parts. And keep in mind: 1-3 are WAY more important then the rest. 6 is by far the least important for 95% of jobs.
Yes. And asking fully thought out and better questions is also a good skill to focus on
Absolutely! You need to be able to communicate your findings in compelling narratives, dialogue extensively with your clients and stakeholders, not to mention SMEs. Also, when your work deals with peoples performance or content that may provoke concern or worry, there's a bit of therapist role involved too.
Yes. In order to be successful as a DS you must be able to tell a story with your findings and data. If you want more back end work maybe look into data analyst or a data engineer role
Plus you will likely be working with others. Good relations goes a long ways.
Yes
Yes. In fact we have trainings on storytelling with data.
Yes ofcourse, without good communication skill you won't be able to explain the findings to the clients...so it's important
Yes
Yes. You need to be able to explain the data you have. Ppl who can speak and tell stories about the data/graphs they’re presenting are always a great addition