Have you made any life altering decisions lately?

[Ofashynessthatiscriminallyvulgar]

I've just withdrawn from a full-time teaching job I had accepted. It was a maternity cover, and I mulled over it for several days. I may regret it, but too late.
Have you made any big decisions lately?

@Lyxou Hey congratulations for having the courage to step out of your comfort zone.

Could I asked how you got a role in data science? I would really like to do this.

@nofornot I already had a numerate degree, and a Ph.D. that involved 3 years of coding, prior to teaching. I also coded a bit in my spare time, even when I was teaching. I then just applied for the lowest level data science job that only required some coding experience a numerate degree and a logical/problem solving mindset.

Everyone I work with has a numerate degree (mostly maths/computer science, but also physics,chemistry, biomedical science, biology). Most also have an M.Sc. in data science.

Be prepared for employers giving you tricky maths/probability questions. See these interview questions to see what I mean.

Also, thoroughly research what a data scientist does (or do an M.Sc. in it), so be familiar with supervised/unsupervised learning, linear regression and other machine learning models, AB tests, overfitting data, stats to check accuracy of models etc. They ask you all this - I researched it all before I applied, so was OK in the interview. I did some courses on simplilearn to get my head round it. And also did a couple of free courses on SQL (never coded in SQL before).

You won’t regret it. I took voluntary early retirement four years ago at 58. Best decision I ever made. It is normal to feel a bit anxious about it though!