Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Gutierrez:
What philosophies have you developed through your use of
data?
Smith:
Something I've learned through data and moving to New York is that
you're always going to have problems with people, so being patient with other
people and really respecting other people is very important in succeeding.
You need to have a lot less ego about yourself to really succeed. You can be
very pushy and aggressive about stuff, and you'll get a ways down the road.
However, I think to really succeed, you need to be authentic about who you
are and very true to yourself, because otherwise, it's a charade that you have
to keep up. At the end of the day, you're not going to like the charade and it's
just going to make you cranky.
In New York, it always seems like everyone's mean and angry, but really, deep
down, everyone just wants to help you. It's exciting and surprising how help-
ful people are and can be if you ask them to help. So I think that's something
you need to understand. They may be angry up front, but it's not because of
you—it's them reacting to something else. If it is due to you, you should just
try to be as nice as you can, and it's okay to say you're sorry. I know because
I've had periods of stunted productivity. It's not fun for anyone, but being able
to recover from that and say, “I'm sorry I went through this. Can we just move
on?” is great.
Lastly, work on positivity and patience. Patience is something I'm working
on right now. Things aren't going to change right away, but you can work on
things, even if they move very slowly. Being able to have that patience and deal
with people—and all their different emotions and reactions—leads to a very
stable work and nonwork life.
Gutierrez:
Going forward, what would you like to see happen with data
science?
Smith:
I'd like to see data science become less of an ego-driven field. I'm
really excited for this to happen. I feel like we're past the rising spike of excite-
ment around it and I'm really excited about it evolving into becoming more
practical and approachable. It's not just a hype thing anymore. It's like when
quants first came to Wall Street. All the physics people wanted to be quants,
whereas now it's kind of de rigueur to find physicists on Wall Street. I like the
idea of every company having a data team that's interested in doing research
on and for their business, rather than just pushing out key business metric
reports.
As this happens, I think much more cooperation and good feelings will per-
meate the industry. Right now, quants and statisticians are feeling somewhat
sidelined right now. I've chatted with statisticians who feel like they have to
rebrand themselves as data scientists. This habit should naturally die out as
the industry matures and lead to a more cohesive community with less cliquey
behavior. This is great because the goal should be less to have a specific title
