#but also I’m open for hire if you want a data analyst or data engineer

[tunder]

If Harris wins can I please get a green card

[torielectra83]

Garak and the Jack Pack

Want to thank

@volixia669

for giving me the idea and motivation; this is the first fic I've posted and finished in quite a while. Also gonna tag

@unicorn-and-bluebells

and

@tirlaeyn

since their DS9-related posts are what helped lead me to this (if there's a DS9-related Discord I should join, let me know); note that I'm not much of a shipper (and I'm ace), so I wasn't quite sure how to approach the Bashir/Garak relationship; I just left it in the background (and the lizard man t-shirt).

“Oh, Doctor. There you are, and I….see you’ve brought company!” As he could see, Dr. Bashir was heading for the Replimat for his typical luncheon with him, only four other people were crowded around him. A skinny man with a mustache, a stocky older man with a timid expression, a rather gregarious-looking woman, and another woman who looked rather distant. “Oh, hello Garak. I’d like to apologize for being a bit late.”

“Oh, don’t worry, given what I’m seeing it’s very much a valid excuse.” Garak had heard about the other genetically-engineered people who’d been sent to DS9 to meet Dr. Bashir, but he’d been busy with orders at his shop; he’d been thinking about hiring someone to help out, actually. “Well, that’s Jack, Patrick, Lauren and Sarina. This is my...friend Garak, he runs a tailoring shop here on the Promenade.” “Oh, hi there, Hi. Uh, I gotta go over to the replicator, I’m starving over here.” Jack promptly excused himself, while Lauren made her way to Garak next. “Well, hello, Mr. Garak.” She promptly began her flirtatious attitude. “If you’re trying to seduce me...it won’t work. I am sorry, but I do not generally do one night stands.” Surprised and somewhat disappointed, Lauren backed away.

Patrick then approached Garak. “Do you make clothes?” “Yes, I do.” Patrick then grinned eagerly. “Good, because the clothes the institute gives us are too...itchy and things like that. Do you have softer clothes?” “Well, I can certainly make some? I believe Dr. Bashir said you need “sensory-friendly” clothing?” Bashir nodded; the term was an old term from pre-warp Earth. “I’ll do it at no charge; anyone who’s a friend of Dr. Bashir is a friend of mine.” He sipped his Tarkalean tea as Jack argued with the replicator over not being able to make something, while Lauren used the other one to replicate a bowl of Vulcan plomeek soup.

“And… Sarina, is it? I’ve noticed you haven’t said anything yet.” Garak simply saw the young woman turn, before holding up a PADD, with words written on it -- “I can’t speak, If you want to have a conversation with me, use this.” She promptly set the PADD down and continued to watch Jack’s tussle with the computer. “Sarina’s unable to speak, I can explain the whole thing later Garak.” Julian felt the need to pre-emptlively apologize for their behavior. “Oh, you don’t need to. I’m seeing people with a lot of potential here.” Bashir nodded. “So do I. And not many others do. That’s why I brought them here. I want to try and help them.”

“They seem to be helping themselves.” As Garak watched, Jack had finally managed to get something from the replicator that agreed with his standards -- a ham sandwich with Bajoran mapa bread. “So, this is the irrefutable Elim Garak, huh?” Jack asked. “Yes, and I see my reputation precedes me.” Garak said politely. “That’s right. Former intelligence agent for the now-defunct Obsidian Order, exiled and now working as a tailor here on DS9.” He said hastily before ripping into his sandwich. Garak raised an eyebrow. “And how did you find that out?” He asked, a tone of interest in his voice. “Oh, you’d be surprised what you can dig up on the extranet. There’s all sorts of unsavory rumors about you, like you causing a Cardassian doctor to break down by staring at them for four hours straight.” He promptly chugged from his cup of targ milk, before continuing. “And that your father was the head of the Obsidian Order, Enabrian Tain, and he got wiped out by the Dominion when the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar teamed up, yeah, but they didn’t know the second-in-command of the Tal Shiar was actually a Changeling leading them right into a trap!”

“I...think we will have to pick up this conversation sometime later, Doctor.” Garak was getting rather uncomfortable at all this private information being practically shouted in the Promenade. “Oh, and I’ll see what I can do about those new clothes you requested, Patrick.” As Garak walked back to his shop, getting his mind off old events, he began pondering about what to do in the present. My orders are backlogged. I simply need help. As he opened his shop doors to see the current state -- half-finished orders, bolts of fabric all over and supplies in crates he hadn’t unpacked. “I must find someone to help me. I would get Julian but he’s too busy with being in Starfleet.” Garak sighed, and began getting back to working on an order.

Some time later...

Having returned from the Defiant, Dr. Bashir went into Garak’s shop, expecting to see it as it had been for some time -- cluttered and filled with things Garak was working on. He instead found it a hive of activity. Customers were entering and exiting, some waiting for their orders, others were looking at holographic models of new clothes to order. Bashir looked around in confusion. “What the…'' Suddenly, a figure blocked by their holding of several bolts of fabric maneuvered into view. “Look out, everyone!” Bashir knew that voice. “Patrick?!” “Oh, hi, Dr. Bashir.” Patrick didn’t even turn back as he carried the bolts into the back of the shop. “Patrick, how did you get here?” Bashir followed him, and realized the entire “Jack Pack” (as someone, most likely Quark, had nicknamed them) was working there. Patrick set the bolts down for Jack, who proceeded to start measuring what exactly was needed for that order. Lauren was busy inputting data of some kind into a PADD, while Sarina was sewing an order up. “Ah, Doctor, good to see you’ve returned home safe and sound!” Garak greeted him cheerily from behind his desk.

“Garak, what is going on here? How did they…” “Well, Julian. I saw their potential and I needed help. And so far, they have been excelling at everything they’ve been doing. I haven’t been this efficient, ever!” Garak looked positively delighted at this. It was rare to see him like this, and Julian was a noted expert on Garak’s emotions. “But...what about the Institute? And Dr. Loews?” “Well, she needed a vacation, and my offer to give them steady employment was something she couldn’t pass up.”

“Oh, well then. But...how are you so busy now?” Julian wondered. “Well, their brightness led them to not only help clear my backorders, but also introduce whole new product lines based on pre-warp Earth stylings. I will admit I knew little about it, but they have brought in several new kinds of clothing. Like this ‘tee shirt’.” Garak promptly held one up, the front reading “WWCKD?” with a small line underneath reading “What Would Captain Kirk Do?” “They’ve come up with several of these things. Like this one for the USS Voyager.” The shirt had a fictional flyer on the front with a picture of Voyager, underneath a “Missing: Reward” banner as if it were a lost dog. “We’ve also re-created other Earth fashions, from “bell-bottoms” to “zoot suits”. I must admit, they make most current styles of clothing look downright boring!”

“Yeah, Dr. Bashir! Here’s one we made especially for you!” Jack promptly handed him a T-shirt and headed into the front of the shop. Julian simply looked at Garak with an expression of disbelief. “Garak, we caught them trying to pass on classified information to the Dominion, and now, they’re recommending I wear a t-shirt that says ‘If lost, return to lizard man for reward’!” He said angrily, shaking the shirt in his hand for added emphasis.

“Doctor...these people needed another chance. One that nobody else was willing to give them. And another thing...they are still very useful analysts. They can predict trends, root out information and generally think far ahead of the game. To be quite honest, they’re the best analysts I’ve ever seen. “ Garak admitted. “Yeah, where else can you get a nice new pair of pants and information of Dominion troop movements?” Lauren commented.

“So...you’re basically running your own intelligence service out of this shop.” Bashir muttered, running his hand through his hair. “Well, there has to be a third-party intel service somewhere. With the Obsidian Order gone, there’s a market for it; we used to take on clients for analysis as a method for extra revenue. Strictly off the books, of course. So that’s what I’m doing now.” Garak reasoned. “And we aren’t just doing war intelligence either; we’ve got multiple projects for the Ferengi Alliance, the First Federation and the Gorn Hegemony for analyzing things like market trends, population censuses and whatnot.” Patrick nodded. “Yeah, Grand Nagus Zek and Ishka appreciate it! We got in touch with them thanks to the Ferengi maintenance guy, oh, what was his name…”

“Rom, that’s him. Real friendly guy. Came up with the self-replicating mines around the wormhole and keeps the holosuites running, real good guy.” Jack said at his normal speedy pace, before returning to his fabric measuring. Sarina promptly passed a PADD to Bashir, with a message reading “This is the best we’ve been treated in years. We’re working for ourselves, we’re constantly kept active, and we’re being paid 5 strips of latinum an hour.”

“Anyway, I’ll see you later, Doctor. We’ve got a lot to do before closing time today. After that we can meet at Quark’s, perhaps? Jack came up with this astounding holo-program based on another pre-warp Earth cultural thing, a “game show” called...Wipeout, yes. It involved picking the right answers and avoiding the wrong ones, it’s fascinating. But we have work to do and I’m sure you have work in the infirmary.”

Garak promptly ushered Dr. Bashir out of the store and back onto the Promenade. “...what just happened?”

[counter-example]

Math summer opportunities that aren’t REU’s

Many of these have really early deadlines, thus why I’m posting now! Also, when I applied to industry internships last year, many of them seemed to take people on a rolling basis (so get those applications in early). Some of these require US citizenship; I think all require at least permanent residency. Most of these programs will take sophomores and some will take freshman and/or graduating seniors.

Air Force Research Laboratory 

Argonne National Laboratory

Director’s Summer Program/Cryptanalysis and Signals Analysis Summer Program

MIT Lincoln Laboratory - this one seems to just toss your resume in an internship database and then people who want to hire interns can browse the database, so I’m not sure it matters too much which internship you apply to.

NIST Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

Oakridge Institute for Science and Education - this is a fairly thorough listing of a lot of different opportunities. They don’t seem to keep resumes in a database, so apply to any and all of the positions that look interesting to you.

Sandia National Laboratories

You can also check out AMS’s list of internships, SIAM’s list of internships and the USAJobs page for students for more ideas.

Also - if you have some economics classes or some computer science classes (or just coding experience), you are probably qualified for financial analyst intern positions and data science intern positions. If you have fairly significant coding experience, you could try software engineering intern positions. I found internships to apply to through my school’s job board last year (they use Handshake) and was fairly successful. You could also try websites like Indeed.com, but I wasn’t as successful there. If you have minors or another major in another science or business discipline, that can also open a lot of doors in terms of internships. 

My best piece of advice is this: apply to anything you think looks interesting, regardless of how unqualified you feel! Applying to jobs is free and once you have a cover letter and resume, modifying them isn’t that much work. Literally the worst that can happen is that you never get a reply. And who knows? You might just get pleasantly surprised. 

Feel free to add on to this post if you have other suggestions for internship opportunities for math majors!

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS & STUDIES, late April 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from April 9th to May 2, although some may be older than that. 

I am really interested in hearing what you think of this new format - please leave a comment below, or convo, Tweet or email me through my website. Let’s make this as useful as possible! 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

US Amazon sellers were told via email that they will have to pay taxes on some Amazon fees, as Etsy has been doing with sellers in the EU and in Quebec. 

The Instagram look may be dropping out of favour; apparently, reality is in. “Instagram museums and walls were built to allow normal people to take influencer-quality photographs—but they worked so well, those types of photos became common enough that they don’t resonate like they used to. “#unfiltered 

In case you missed it, my review of Etsy’s Spring & Summer Trends Guide, including all of the keyword data (which you do need to check out, as they reveal some interesting search info). 

ETSY NEWS

Etsy published a new census/survey of sellers in its 6 core countries, and also did a summary (if you don’t want to read the whole thing). “More than nine out of ten Etsy sellers (91%) are the sole owner of their businesses.”... “The majority (82%) of Etsy sellers would like to grow their business, but more than three out of five would not want to grow so big that they would have to hire more help.”

The bugs & errors with financial statements and records continue; Etsy botched the VAT statements yet again, even overwriting them all the way back to 2016. No word on whether any sellers have notified EU authorities on this yet. 

New seller handbook article covers advertising; not much new or gripping, but it does discuss general ad approaches, not just Etsy’s. 

There is also a new free shipping tool, in case you didn’t realize that Etsy wants more sellers to offer free shipping more often. “When we talk to shoppers during research, many say things like “I want to feel like I’m getting a deal!” and “I would love to see free shipping across the board, even if it meant increased prices.” Offering free shipping can be a great way to give customers like these the shopping experience they are looking for.”

CEO Josh Silverman participated in The Wall Street Journal’s “In the Elevator” interview series [video link]. Every 90 seconds, an engagement ring or wedding ring sells on Etsy. He also talks about free & fast shipping not always being a reasonable expectation when shopping on Etsy, unlike Amazon. 

Speaking of free shipping, a limited number of US customers will be getting it from Etsy, with Etsy reimbursing sellers for the costs. Non-US sellers and buyers get nothing. 

Etsy’s 2019 1st quarter results will be available May 8.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Rand Fishkin released Part 5 of his Learn SEO in 1 Hour series: technical SEO [video & written transcript]. This is the one most of you can skip or just skim over, as it does talk a lot about coding.Some tips are important to everyone, however, like page linking/site structure (for websites), and having https set up. 

Part 6 covers link building, in 10 minutes. Remember, if you are going to put effort into getting links, do it for your website & not your Etsy shop or other marketplace page. If you are creating traffic, make sure you own it. 

Don’t forget looking beyond Google for your search engine traffic; this podcast [with written transcript] breaks down an approach to several of the biggest ones beyond Google. Spoiler: they only recommend worrying about the biggest, Bing, if you have around 1000 unique search visitors to your website per day. 

How to get keyword ideas from the Google search results: there’s a lot more available now, beyond the search bar suggestions. 

Google is asking local businesses if they would pay for their Google My Business listings. This possibility raises concerns about the impact on organic rankings. 

More SEO tips for Amazon, including discussion of the various factors involved.

If pages on your website aren’t indexed by Google, there are some steps you can take to fix them. (For websites only, not Etsy shops)

Advanced/semi-advanced content: Great tips on using bookmarklets in Chrome to get SEO things done quickly. (A lot of these involve tools that work best in the paid version, so I suspect most of us will not have much use for this, yet.)

Possible Google algorithm update last week. (I am seeing changes)

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

Looking for new hashtags for your social media accounts? Try: https://www.tagshitter.com  (apologies for the name; that’s what they call it. It’s good, too! Just like its regular keyword research partner, http://keywordshitter.com/ ) 

Email subject lines [infographic] are crucial to top interaction with your newsletter etc. Includes Dos & Don’ts, plus the shockingly low open rates in most industries. 

Selling through social media directly is a great way to avoid people losing interest as they keep clicking. Note that this seems to work best with items under $50, though, which they suggest solutions to in the next part of the article.  

Despite all the scandals and negative media coverage, US social media use hasn’t really changed in the past few years. “A 2018 Center survey found that some Facebook users had recently taken steps to moderate their use of the site – such as deleting the Facebook app from their phone or taking a break from the platform for some time. But despite these findings and amid some high profile controversies, Facebook users as a whole are just as active on the site today as they were a year ago.”

Facebook scandal watch:  FB’s “stock price jumped after it said it expects to incur a fine of up to $5 billion from the Federal Trade Commission. And that’s all you really need to know about whether the historically large penalty matters to the company.”

Also:

they admitted to asking for your email password then importing all of your contacts. “...Facebook disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people's contacts were collected this way and fed into Facebook's systems, where they were used to improve Facebook's ad targeting, build Facebook's web of social connections, and recommend friends to add.”

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner is taking FB to court over breaches of Canadian privacy law. 

But hey, it’s all fine, because they beat earnings expectations in the first quarter. 

70% of YouTube videos watched are recommended by its algorithm. “ The recommendations are fueled by the artificial-intelligence arm, Google Brain, of YouTube’s parent company. The machine-learning models help identify videos that aren’t exactly what you just watched, but similar enough that you might like them.“

Does directing people to the link in your Instagram bio really work? Testing says that it probably doesn’t work for most accounts, and more importantly, that Instagram may be limiting the algorithm visibility of posts that direct visitors to the link in your bio. 

Twitter has now limited the number of accounts you can follow in 1 day, to 400 down from 1000; this is intended to cut back on spammers. 

US Twitter users are better educated & better off than the average American.(Good article for target market considerations)

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Amazon is reducing/removing the ads for its own products, possibly due to increased complaints of unfair competition. “Amazon is now the third-largest digital advertising platform, behind Google and Facebook”, and could grow 50% this year alone, based on projections. 

Facebook retargeting tips. And everything you need to know about the Facebook pixel for tracking your ad performance. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

Some Google Analytics tips for websites - almost beginner level! 

The Google Search Console delays are nearly all fixed. 

Stats programs all give you different numbers, and that isn’t likely to improve. (This piece is semi-advanced; don’t bother with it if you aren’t a stats geek.)

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

eBay’s Spring Marketplace Updates include several back end changes and a fee increase for sellers who run afoul of eBay’s seller performance standards. 

Amazon sellers can buy so-called “black hat” services to beat its algorithms. These include tips from Amazon employees who are making money by reporting on Amazon’s inner workings. Amazon “also said it takes action against sellers who pay for internal information; penalties include terminating their selling accounts, deleting reviews, withholding funds, and taking legal action.” No doubt the company already has closed some of the loopholes discussed in the article.

Amazon also fires warehouse workers by algorithm, based on productivity. 

GoDaddy launches an ecommerce sharing tool that lets you list across multiple websites including your standalone. Current marketplace options include Etsy, Amazon, eBay, Jet & Walmart. They bought Sellbrite as part of this move. Quite a few different entities are releasing this type of service, so shop around if it is something you are interested in. 

eBay released their 1st quarter 2019 results on April 23. Total sales were down 4% from 2018 (they were close to even when currency fluctuations were accounted for), but eBay’s own income from seller fees was up. “eBay reduced their marketing by a significant amount where their cash was being used to effectively subsidise the sales of high value items. Put simply, eBay have been buying sales and now they’ve stopped and this has seen a reduction in high ticket items being sold in comparison to sales of lower value items.” Easter being later this year may have slowed ecommerce growth overall in the quarter. 

...but Amazon reported record revenue, up 16.9% over 2018. Despite that, analysts note that growth is slowing, & that Amazon’s own projections for the second quarter are lower than many predicted. “Amazon’s CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the call with analysts that part of the lower guidance is due to an $800 million investment in making free one-day delivery shipping the default for Prime members.” - if you thought buyers wanted stuff yesterday already, wait til this becomes the norm ... I mean, Walmart & Target stocks fell after the announcement. Walmart is already hinting at offering the same. 

You can return your Amazon purchases at Kohl’s in the US, starting everywhere in July. Ease of returns is going to be a bigger battleground in the next few years, as retailers continue to increase free & speedy shipping options. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Generation Z will be making 40% of US retail purchases by next year; they are going to change a lot about selling. “ Fair trade products, ethical business practices, and a strong mission statement have never been more essential. Vend reports, “Research has shown that this particular generation cares about various environmental issues (76% are concerned about humanity’s impact on the planet) as well as social causes such as racial, gender, and income inequality.” [Gen Z come after millennials, and are currently more numerous than millennials or boomers.] 

Millennials & Gen Z are big gift card buyers in the US - over 1/3 buy a card every 3 months. 

Brick & mortar stores & malls are using your phone location data (location analytics) to make marketing and product decisions. “Every company interviewed for this story said it chooses not to use information that could identify individuals. But for the most part they’re on an honor system because rules governing data remain relatively lax.” This surprised me: “To glean details, including an individual’s age, income, ethnicity, education level, number of children and more, firms connect the phone’s evening location with U.S. Census data”

MISCELLANEOUS 

US copyright law: the USSC rules that your copyright registration must be finished/approved before you can sue an infringer in federal court.  

If you hate Gmail’s current layout, you will love this Chrome extension. 

And if you use Google Sheets fairly often, you will likely learn something useful from these tips. 

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, missed industry revenue expectations in the first quarter of 2019. 

[thedatasciencehyderabad]

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Firstly, introduction to Data Science, Python core and advanced together with understanding textual content and Data evaluation and Visualisation with Python. Prime classes, a famend Data Science Institute in Hyderabad, provide high quality ability-set improvement providers for college kids and corporates. 360DigiTMG has a worldwide home workplace within the USA and Hyderabad is the headquarter in India. It is a number one Data Science Institute in Hyderabad, established in 2013 with the purpose of overcoming any barrier between trade wishes and academia.

For more information

360DigiTMG - Data Analytics, Data Science Course Training Hyderabad  

Address - 2-56/2/19, 3rd floor,, Vijaya towers, near Meridian school,, Ayyappa Society Rd, Madhapur,, Hyderabad, Telangana 500081

099899 94319

https://g.page/Best-Data-Science

[dalanmendonca]

To MBA or not to MBA? - Part 1

The question that plagues the mildly successful yet mostly ambitious. Let’s break down how you can make this decision well.

Understand your goals and emotions

What is the career problem or opportunity that triggered this thought?

Some common motivations are:

Do a functional shift (aka “my job sucks”) - I’m an engineer and want to get into marketing. The MBA offers a paved road instead of the relative chaos of doing this myself.

Get a brand (aka “my resume is ugly”)- I went to a not so famous school for undergrad, a fancy degree could elevate my profile, unlock career opportunities and make me feel amazing!

Accelerate my career (aka “glaciers move faster than my career!”)- I’m already on my desired career track but the MBA can accelerate how fast I hit my career milestones.

Avoid marriage (aka “what is wrong with my parents”) - This hilarious sounding reason is sadly true in India where parents will allow their daughters to push off marriage if they are doing (allegedly) productive things like an MBA.

Do a location shift (aka “I want to work on Wall Street”) - No explanation needed.

More money (aka “Fucking retard Amit can’t do shit and punts all his work on me but gets paid more because he’s from IIM”) - Sabse bada rupaiya

Chill out (aka “chill out”) - Stave off the madness of the real world by entering the temporary cocoon of an educational institutional.

Yours might be different or a combination of multiple things. Don’t just understand your reasons, acknowledge your emotions, think clearly, and dig deeper so that you don’t misdiagnose the problem. Many people are frustrated by their current workplace or their current boss, which makes them feel stuck and stagnant in their career. Such a person might unknowingly look at B-school as an escape, yet they don’t need an MBA; they need a vacation, some drinks, and therapy. And maybe a new job.

Understand what an MBA offers

Despite popular propaganda about the value of an MBA. I can attest to the reality that it does not fix all your character flaws, make your teeth whiter and transform you into a better person as soon you fork out your admission fees. It can give you a solid push towards betterment though!

So, what do you get?

During the course you get

Education/Knowledge: You can learn new topics or go deep into things you were interested in. Many B-school professors are not only published scholars but also actively advising companies and participating in projects, etc. So, they're in touch with the business environment.

New friends: Just like your undergrad you will live/work/play with lots of new people and find new members of your tribe.

A Switch [role/function/industry/location]: This is a result of a better resume and interview prep, placements (uncommon outside India), access to a hiring cycle, introductions of recruiting companies, visa, etc.

Salary bump: Works out for most people.

After the course, you get

A Brand: A friend once asked me how I landed my job at Paytm (It was my break into product management from being a data analyst). “I just applied and got the role” I told her. “That’s what all the IITians and BITSians say. I also applied but never got a call.” Brand means your resume floats to the top of the pile, you’re more likely to get a interview call, your LinkedIn SEO gets a boost, and the TAM of your future mother-in-laws is much larger. Fair or unfair, it is how the world operates. The associated prestige of a fancy degree opens many doors.  Relatedly it gives you an air of credibility. In some industries degrees may not matter, but lots of places in the world, the door remains closed unless you’ve paid the price in terms of some elite signal/symbol. Finally, status, it just feels cooler. “Did you know that Josh went to Harvard!” is a great way to get introduced at parties. A final off shoot of brand is Career optionality. You can try for roles in more different places with the weight of your brand.

A Network: Your batch-mates will be joining plum companies. B-school networks are more diverse in comparison to the typical Indian undergrad college. People enter from differing functions and sectors, later joining a wide spectrum of roles. In my batch alone, I have people in Private Equity, Marketing, Brand, Product, Finance, Consulting and even some folks in public policy. Far more impactful than your batch of course if your alumni network. It might span the country/globe, even have a strong foothold in certain sectors. With the prohibitive cost of an MBA, people are initially conservative and chase plum/safe jobs. That risk aversion is well over by 5 years with B-school graduates starting new business and ventures. Whether it’s a referral for a job or access to rare information, connects, or opportunities to join new ventures; as a member of the alumni network you get early access to some great opportunities and support.

Finally, the subjective effects are immeasurable. What’s the value of becoming a more confident human being?

Understand what it costs

MBA tuition fees are huge, no two ways about it. The costs don’t stop there. You also have the opportunity cost of foregone wages including raises and promotions. Finally, you have visa risk and job risk if you’re going abroad. There’s a ticking clock and potential hiccups even on student visas, coupled with risk of not getting a long-term visa.  This is not just a financial cost, this can be emotionally draining, and nerve-wrecking.

That said, loans are easy to come by for good colleges, and people pay them off in 3-5 years. How fast you can pay it off but depends on your post-MBA job. People in lucrative areas can get done in <2 years. The trap here is looking at average salary instead average salary in your target sector post-MBA.

Understand how the value accrues to you

One might foolishly index the value of an MBA based on median salary and salary increase relative to how much you earn currently. But the value of the brand and network last for much longer than that, potentially your entire life.

Landing a top job can be career-altering. Your value is a combination of your inherent capabilities and external signifiers that (we assume) indicate those capabilities. With B-school, you are suddenly more exposed to a network generating opportunities all the time.

<Insert graph about life-long trajectories with and without MBA>

Understand what MBA does not offer

A simple but fair reduction would be to call an MBA, a shortcut. Nothing stops you from learning finance, improving your speaking skills, or getting a fancy job without an MBA. There might be barriers, but none are insurmountable. Someone who works hard, get smarter, maintains a good reputation, and develops a good network, has good chances of succeeding with or without an MBA.

It is a shortcut but it not an automatic and eternal one. You get access to more opportunities, but they aren’t served on platter. You still have to go looking for them, be worthy of being offered them and be capable of making something of them. Making the most out of a network requires you to be savvy, the MBA degree won’t make you confident person who can seek out opportunities, you’ll have to do that yourself.

And there are alternate means too. A good brand like Google on your resume might arguably be better than 90% of B-school logos. We live in 2021, the most connected humanity has ever been. There’s Twitter, Linkedin, Slack communities and so many other ways to build your personal brand and grow your personal opportunity surface. Online networks and communities are competing with old school networks, eating a greater chunk of the pie everyday.

Finally, the MBA does not give you a brain implant that automatically improves your strategic thinking. It surely teaches a lot more buzzwords though.

Part 2 to follow

[360digitmgba]

Data Science Training

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360DigiTMG - Data Analytics, Data Science Course Training Hyderabad

Explore more - data science course in Hyderabad with placements

 Address:-2-56/2/19, 3rd floor, Vijaya towers, near Meridian school, Ayyappa Society Rd, Madhapur, Hyderabad, Telangana 500081

Contact us ( 099899 94319 )

Hours: Sunday - Saturday 7 AM - 11 PM

[picloblog]

Meet the team: building new platform features!

Get to know the team at Piclo responsible for building new features on Piclo Flex. Introducing:

Adrian, Data Engineer

Hua, Service Designer and User Researcher 

Liam, Software Developer

Meghan, Product Manager

Q1. What does your role involve when Piclo builds new platform features?

Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?

I love understanding a problem and figuring out the best solution, and take particular pride in making it efficient when I'm able to.

Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?

I would say being able to translate between the real world and the world of data, and being an effective communicator. It helps when people want to know something but aren't quite sure how to ask for it.

Q4. Other than working on introducing new platform features what else does your role include?

I help with producing data insights for both industry and commercial purposes. As data engineer, I'm also closely involved with testing and managing our cloud infrastructure to ensure we are able to scale the platform.

Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?

I have worked as an analyst and software developer for an environmental consultancy and an off-grid solar provider. Before that I did a PhD in volcano seismology 🌋

Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?

I wanted to work at a company involved in modernising our energy infrastructure that also had technology at its core. I had heard good things about Open Utility (now known as Piclo), it fit the bill, they were about to embark on the Piclo Flex project, and they were hiring. So, here I am!

Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?

Tackling climate change is absolutely important to me. Whenever I can, I champion our scientific understanding of climate change (being a geoscientist). I've also tried to build my career around work that helps solve some of the inefficiencies driving climate change. In the name of environmentalism I also gave up eating meat.

Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?

You don't need a PhD in volcano seismology.

Q1. What does your role involve when Piclo builds new platform features?

Before we commit to any new features, I do some investigations to understand the problem and then share the insights with the team, then we explore solutions together. I prototype different solutions to help with visualisation and the prototypes are then used to help validate our assumptions with the users. By the time we are ready to build, the design has gone through quite a few iterations. We follow the Lean startup model of build - measure - learn, so launching new features is a step in the loop; afterwards I collect quantitative and qualitative feedback, which will guide us to figure out what we should build next.

Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?

The flexibility market is not only new to me; it’s also new to many players in the market. I’m learning with them together and helping this market to evolve. The past 12 months of remote working was only made bearable by the wonderful people I work with. My colleagues gave me a lot of support and inspiration. The shared vision of a decarbonised future keeps us motivated.

Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?

Putting aside the hard skills of being a designer, I have benefited from developing some soft skills: being curious, being empathetic towards others and myself, getting comfortable with uncertainties and learning from making mistakes.

Q4. Other than working on introducing new platform features what else does your role include?

I sincerely believe that designers don’t hold the best ideas or know the solution to every problem; designers can play the facilitator to guide the team to develop innovative ideas based on their expertise. Disseminating the user knowledge within the team is an essential step after user research. I try to create reusable artefacts, reports or visualisations to store these insights. I recently got very interested in doing quantitative analysis and discovered some useful behavioural patterns and trends.

Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?

I was freelancing and worked on a few exciting projects in public service and fintech. Somehow I always ended up working on complex domains with highly specialised user groups. I have been fortunate to collaborate with great teams that unite around user needs and are very generous to support each other.

Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?

I’d like to drive a positive impact contributing to solving the climate crisis. A friend of mine told me about their work in the energy trading space, and it opened my eyes to this industry. When I first met the team, I got a good vibe. Alice shared the employee handbook with me before I joined; it showed some very progressive thinking in how the company is run. The product ethos is user-centric, and there is a good understanding of the value of design activities.

Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?

Yoyu is a simple app that shows the carbon intensity of energy production forecast for the next 24 hours. I try to shift my energy consumption to the time when there is more renewable energy. I have a smart plug connected to all the chargeable devices at home and it is timed to switch on based on the information in Yoyu. I also compost waste as much as possible. Landfills create a lot more greenhouse gases and soil is the carbon sink - I’m delighted that the local council offers composting!

Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?

Don’t stop learning. The environment around us is rapidly changing, which is very exciting. The way we work and design are constantly evolving. Be creative about how you can enrich yourself, either in learning new skills or pursuing new interests.

Q1. What does your role involve when Piclo builds new platform features?

Trying not to overpromise and underdeliver. My role generally involves taking designs, requirements and packages of work from the product team and turning them into something that can be used. It’s a fairly stimulating mixture of user interface/frontend development mixed with backend data wrangling. I try and steer clear of the super techy infrastructure side of things.

Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?

Being part of a small team working on a specific problem, it’s nice to have input at pretty much every stage of defining and implementing a particular feature, as opposed to churning out widgets of code.

Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?

Pragmatism and compromise are always useful.

Q4. Other than working on introducing new platform features what else does your role include?

In a good way, my role is pretty much entirely devoted to this purpose. There aren’t many random tasks or meetings I find clogging up my day (aside from filling out timesheets).

Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?

Harvesting cookie data for a soulless marketing platform. Before that I was a soulless management consultant.

Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?

I like how Piclo is genuinely trying to solve a problem that hasn’t been addressed yet.

Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?

It’s obviously a huge problem but I can’t profess to it informing my everyday life. Sometimes though, there’s a convenient overlap between my being stingy and green behaviours: cycling as much as possible; picking the meat free option.

Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?

Trust your instinct.

Q1. What does your role involve when Piclo builds new platform features

As a product manager I have a wide range of activities I get involved in when building new features. A quick summary: defining the problems we’re trying to solve, supporting our designers during user research, unpacking all the learnings, co-leading discovery sessions to dig into the problem we’re trying to solve, bringing the team together to design solutions, ticket scoping, and validating recent releases via testing.

Q2. What do you enjoy most about working on this?

As cliche as this sounds, I really do enjoy taking problems off people’s plates, and improving things through our software. As a product manager, you really do have a direct impact on identifying user problems and championing solutions to keep evolving your product.

Q3. Are there particular skills you need for this role?

I think it’s really important to be empathetic in this role. If you struggle to understand your user’s or the pain points that the developers might be feeling, you will also struggle to be a successful PM. Good, clear communication is hugely important. You need to be confident in the decisions you are making, as many times you need to explain or justify why you are or aren’t doing something. Finally, I’d say that collaboration as a PM is a vital skill to embrace and keep getting better at - great products are built with the whole team, and it’s important to know when to reach out to experts on your team to make decisions.

Q4. Other than working on introducing new platform features what else does your role include?

Essentially, my job entails making sure that our production teams are working on the right things at the right times. At Piclo this is a really collaborative process. I’m involved in roadmapping, sprint and release planning at a high level. On a more practical day to day level, I assist in problem discovery, definition of features, ticket scoping and post development testing and validation. I also get to liaise with a lot of different stakeholders in order to improve our product. I especially like supporting our customer success team to get a pulse on what is happening with our product.

Q5. What did you do before joining Piclo?

Just before Piclo I was working for a Madrid based startup. Our product was akin to an Oyster card for live events - mainly music festivals. I had many different roles there but naturally progressed into product management. Aside from the usual PM work, I got to travel loads and see our product being deployed at many a music festival - that was a nice little bonus 😎

Q6. Why did you like the look of the job?

I found myself questioning more and more whether or not where I was choosing to spend my time was meaningful in the grand scheme of things. When the answer turned out to be a ‘not really’ I knew it was time for a change. I loved Piclo’s mission (still do), and I sincerely think that we are building a product that is changing behaviours today to tackle climate change. I was also really attracted to Piclo’s emphasis on teamwork and transparency. This is not just something that we say on job descriptions. We work hard every day to maintain this principle.

Q7. Piclo is built on the belief that we are not powerless against climate change. Is tackling climate change important to you? Is there anything you do to contribute?

Tackling climate change is important to me, it’s one of the reasons I landed at Piclo. I contribute by not eating meat, choosing a green tariff on my energy bill, when commuting choosing to cycle, and I’ve recently subscribed to Mossy Earth after our CEO recommended it 👏🏼 Really nice project!

Q8. What advice would you give to someone wanting to follow a similar career to yours?

Don’t be afraid to try, fail, learn, and ask a lot of questions along the way. Also, find a community of like minded individuals that you can share your experiences with specifically as a PM or aspiring one.

[haulix]

New openings (March 26, 2018)

Manager, Urban Artist Development (WMG - NYC)

Artist Development works closely with every department to put together artists’ day to day activities and travel arrangements. Making sure the company and management are all in agreement on where the artist is and the work that is being done. Having a close working relationship with agents and promoters to help find new touring and event opportunities for our artists.

Manager, Marketing Music (Netflix - Los Angeles) 

The Netflix marketing legal team is hiring a seasoned manager of music to manage music clearance for Netflix’s Marketing and PR teams.Our Marketing and PR campaigns are a key part of Netflix’s ongoing success, and music is core to those campaigns. Working closely with the existing marketing music team, the company’s Music Group and stakeholders in the Marketing and PR organizations, the successful candidate will be comfortable working through a wide range of music clearance matters. Keeping in mind the strategic goals of the company and understanding the broader legal implications of each music deal is paramount. This includes working across various types of media in all kinds of integrations, having great relationships in the music industry and knowing how to keep forward momentum in the fast-moving world of marketing and PR. Helping find song owners (no matter how obscure), digging into challenging negotiations, and facilitating the marketing and PR teams music use.

Marketing Analyst (WMG - Burbank, CA) 

The Data & Analytics team is responsible for providing insight, research & analysis within Warner Bros. Records in order to drive business and provide better day to day decision making.

Marketing Manager (DSP Shows - Ithaca, NY) 

The Marketing Manager is responsible for marketing a large portfolio of events presented by DSP Shows across upstate New York and New England. This individual will work directly with the partners to create and implement marketing strategies for shows in venues ranging from 200 capacity clubs to 7000 capacity amphitheaters.

Analyst, Finance (WMG - Los Angeles) 

This role will give excellent insight into what it takes to run a multinational business in a fun industry. Your ability to learn from working closely with senior management and an experienced finance team will be unmatched elsewhere. The exposure you will get to working alongside senior finance will be unparalleled and could be a launching pad for a very long and successful career. You will be joining a company that is in the early stages of turning itself around led by a dynamic management team. You will get to work in a brand new office building with amazing people across all aspects of the music business.

Event Coordinator Assistant with Performing Arts Theatre (Heart And Soul Theater - Woodbridge, VA)

Heart and Soul Theatre for performing arts is seeking people part-time who have an interest in assisting with community theatre marketing and planning for family events. If you have a love for organizing events filled with drama, music, and dance performances, this may be the right position for you. The position involves working with community organizations, marketing and managing outreach efforts. Two years of event coordination experience preferred.

Head of Listener Marketing (Pandora - Oakland, CA) 

Pandora is seeking a Head of Listener Marketing to evolve and reenergize Pandora’s focus on our Listeners first and foremost. This leader will drive the listener marketing roadmap and strategic vision for Pandora by creating and executing marketing programs that reaccelerate listener growth and increase brand relevance. Pandora's dominance in streaming music creates an unprecedented opportunity to seamlessly blend the world's largest Personalized Music experience with On-Demand Listening. This marketing leader will evolve Pandora through innovative digital, social and mobile marketing that highlights the product and content offerings, along with the artists and other content creators. The role is located in our Oakland, CA office and will report to the Chief Marketing Officer.

Booking Agent (WBA Entertainment - Hermitage, TN) 

A Booking Agent, works in the music industry to book performers for concerts, gigs and other live music performances. They often schedule performances and negotiate with the artists directly or with booking representatives or producers to arrange terms of contract, dates, and fees.

Administrative Assistant, International Marketing (Sony - NYC) 

The Administrative Assistant will be involved with all aspects of project marketing and will be responsible for providing administrative support to the VP of International Marketing.

Record Label Intern (Rebel Engine Entertainment - Nashville, TN) 

Rebel Engine Entertainment is a small, independently owned label working with rising country artists.

Rebel Engine is looking for interns for an immediate start date who have a passion for country music and the craving to learn more about the music industry in a very hands-on, fast-paced environment. The benefit of working with a small label like Rebel Engine is the opportunity to take on responsibility and be an essential team member.

WRKR Morning Show Host (Townsquare Media - Kalamazoo, MA) 

107.7 WRKR Kalamazoo’s Rock Station is looking for our next Morning Superstar for the first time in 6 years! We need someone to partner with our host of 28 years Mike McKelly on our Morning Team. You must be willing to be a part of a high profile, high intensity, entertaining, LIVE and LOCAL morning show that wins. We are NOT looking for a punch in and punch out employee. We are looking for a morning show co-host that has a strong passion for radio and community. 

Music Enthusiast (Heid Music Company - Green Bay, WI) 

Heid Music is looking for a full-time Retail Sales Music Enthusiast to join our Green Bay, WI team. We select team members that share our value of providing "Bravo" customer service as well as our passion for making music.

Executive Assistant for Head of Music (Dreamworks TV - Glendale, CA) 

DreamWorks TV is currently seeking an executive assistant to support the Head of Music. Candidates must be self-starters who have an extreme attention to detail. Individuals will be expected to field all calls for the department, manage heavy meeting schedules, coordinate travel, download assets, data entry for music trackers and cue sheets, and create monthly music mixes. Professionalism and discretion is a must as the role interacts with many different departments and individuals, including talent, of all levels in and outside of the company.

Music Manager for Artist, Producer & Songwriter (Major Influence - Baltimore, MD)  

Seeking a music manager to work with a small team of music professionals for the sake of maximizing an artist career. Music manager will work closely with artist, handling tasks such as 'shopping' production, booking creative performances, overseeing marketing efforts, assisting fiscally, negotiating and signing contracts, and managing all other aspects of the business side of music performance. Musician management should have strong communication skills to deal with artists, executives, and everyone in between. In addition, the manager will also play a role in helping musician keep a positive attitude in an extremely competitive and difficult industry. Join our team and make a living doing what you love!

Part-Time Production Assistant (Cumulus Media - Nasvhille, TN) 

Nash Campus, Nashville, TN is searching for a Part-time Production Assistant for the syndicated Ty, Kelly and Chuck morning show. We strive to hire people who are passionate about radio, driven, resourceful and problem solvers who have the ability to drive the evolving, diverse culture of the Power of Radio to success. The successful candidate knows we work in the entertainment business and takes pride in the success of their On-Air talent.

Ty, Kelly and Chuck is morning that airs on 49 radio stations around the country each weekday morning. The Production Assistant helps to organize, conceptualize and develops topic, features and guests for Ty, Kelly and Chuck that represents the lifestyle and interests of the show’s listeners. They also partner with the show’s hosts, the show’s Executive Producer and others to create engaging content, increase listenership, and enhance subscriber satisfaction and passion. The production assistant will assist the Executive Producer with the daily technical operation of the show as well as keeping the show’s social platforms relevant and up-to-date.

Production Manager (BSCENE Magazine - Tyler, TX) 

BSCENE is looking for a Production Manager who will report directly to the Managing Editor.

On Air Talent (Townsquare Media - Cheyenne, WY) 

Townsquare Media Cheyenne has an opportunity to host the morning show on 106.3 Cowboy Country. If you have an outgoing personality and enjoy entertaining we want to talk with you! Applicants must be social media savvy, regularly contribute content to the station’s website and YouTube channel, and the successful candidate must be able to connect and engage with the station’s target audience by keeping up with relevant music trends and pop culture.

Artist Manager (A Starr Entertainment LLC - Brooklyn, NY) 

We're looking for an experienced New York based music manager to begin immediately.

We are looking for someone with an established network within the music and entertainment industries, a proven track record of success with other popular music acts, and a strong reputation for client service.

The role will focus on the promotion of the artist’s profile and debut album, booking shows across New York City, & other regions of United States, and the daily management of their business affairs.

Music Industry Internship (Creed Management - Los Angeles, CA) 

If you're looking to work in the music industry this is the perfect job to get started. I run an independent artists management agency and I'm looking to hire two interns. The internship is unpaid for the first four months and paid moving forward. If you work hard and have high energy you will be hired and apart of the team. Lunch will be provided everyday. More details about the internship will be explained via email and phone. Thanks.

Booking Agent (Tama Industries - Austin, TX) 

Tama Industries is an American record label Owned and established by Dynasty Holland. Tama Industries became the home to 3 sub-labels Organized Royalty, Live&Dream Productions and Profound Records. Tama Industries also holds a TV Network, Radio Station and a Home Studio.

We are looking for a few Booking Agents, our agent works in the music industry to book performers for concerts, gigs and other live music performances. They will schedule performances and negotiate with the artists directly or with booking representatives or producers to arrange terms of contract, dates, and fees. They may also audition new talent. You may specialize in independent bookings in a particular musical genre such as Rap& Hip-Hop, chamber music or rock or pop music. Our Artist Booker or Booking Agent may even sponsor, manage and produce the whole event.

Our Booking Agent is responsible for booking live performances including concerts, gigs, tours and radio and TV performances for artists, bands, DJs, choirs, orchestras and other musical ensembles. They are responsible for developing the musicians' or artists' career with regard to their live performance. A Booking Agent, or Artist Booker, will work closely with the artists' management, promoter and our record company.

On-Air Talent (Radio One - St. Louis, MO) 

Competently and professionally provide continuity and surveillance information in a professional, knowledgeable and entertaining way and will be active in pre-show strategy and execution.

Band / Artist Manager (Audio Force One - Los Angeles) 

Audio Force One is looking for an experienced remote music manager to begin a 6-week contract immediately, with the possibility of extending to a full time.

We are looking for someone with an established network within the music and entertainment industries, a proven track record of success with other popular music acts, and a strong reputation for client service.

Entry Level Executive Administrator (TOURTech - Raleigh, NC) 

This position is based in our Raleigh office headquarters. The core duties of this role are to provide administrative support to the executive members of our team. This will include project-based tasks, data entry, market research, calendar management, various correspondence, document filing, travel logistics, and general management of phone inquiries. This role will contribute to our client services efforts with client appreciation and recognition. General office admin duties will also be assigned to this role.

Part-Time Assistant (BMI - Los Angeles) 

This role will assist the Director of Media Relations in various capacities for the LA office in support of the Latin Creative and Film & TV Creative teams. The candidate will be self-motivated, quick-thinking, and able to juggle multiple and diverse responsibilities with a strong emphasize on organizational skills and attention to detail. 

Older posts (7+ days)

Coordinator, Anti-Piracy/Content Protection (WMG - NYC)

We’re looking for someone who thrives on searching the depths of the internet to find when and where unreleased music first pops up. We want someone to help our artists maintain control of their release plans. This person will be the next piece in building a world-class anti-piracy unit.

Coordinator, A&R (Sony - NYC)

The Coordinator is responsible for providing full administrative support to the NY based Co-Heads of A&R.

Assistant Program Director (WIOD/WINZ - Miramar, FL)

Shadows and supports Program Director in all aspects of radio station’s on air experience including: talent, content, tone, programming, production, sound & theme, and online presence.

Vice President Content Development (Fathom Events - Los Angeles, CA)

As one of the key entry points into the company, this position will provide guidance to potential partners for leveraging and monetizing content and events in the cinema. This position is responsible for identifying new business opportunities, developing and maintaining strong relationships and securing deals with new partners. The Vice President–Content Development must demonstrate valuable knowledge of the media ecosystem and industry and have a proven track record of delivering solutions-based results and deal making in support of overall company objectives.

The Vice President–Content Development will be able to switch between establishing high-level strategic vision and managing day-to-day implementation of initiatives without losing sight of priorities, goals and budgets. This position will be a key leader for the company and will be responsible for driving a culture of collaboration across all departments and levels of the organization.

Manager, Urban Artist Development (WMG - NYC)

Artist Development works closely with every department to put together artists’ day to day activities and travel arrangements. Making sure the company and management are all in agreement on where the artist is and the work that is being done. Having a close working relationship with agents and promoters to help find new touring and event opportunities for our artists.

Assistant Director Interlochen Presents, Production (Interlochen Center for the Arts - Interlochen, MI)

Interlochen Center for the Arts, one of America’s most prestigious institutions for arts education, performance and fine arts seeks to hire an Assistant Director of Interlochen Presents-Production. This position is part of a collaborative production team and is responsible for creating and managing all aspects of institutional production needs for performance/rehearsals of student, faculty, guest artist, and rental events.

Publicist / PR (Blossom Entertainment - Los Angeles, CA)

Blossom has an immediate need for a self-motivated and enthusiastic publicist with PR, marketing, sales and business development experience. The position requires hands on public relations experience, working within the music industry. You will collaborate closely with the founders of Blossom who require a hard-working, business minded go-getter who is able to thrive in a fast paced and ever-changing work environment with the skill-set to manage multiple campaigns. Must have connections within the industry to establish music premieres, features, interviews and playlists with taste-makers, editors and writers. Areas of competence include paid ads, traditional/digital PR, social media, newsletter/email blasts and branding. Salary based on experience, sales, commission and closing inbound leads.

Social Media Content Producer (GMR Marketing - New Berlin, WI)

As part of the Digital Group, the Social Media Content Producer will be responsible for the strategy, development and execution of compelling stories stemming from the connections GMR creates around experiences. Focusing primarily on live coverage, the role will lead the concept and copy development for GMR’s social storytelling including sports & lifestyle sponsorships, and influencer activations. This position will report to the VP, Digital + Social on the Digital Solutions team.

Digital Content Producer, Entertainment (SiriusXM - NYC)

The Digital Entertainment Producer has a love for all things pop culture: TV, movies, comedy, pop music and internet. This candidate knows how to shoot and edit video optimized for social media, as well as manage daily posting and ongoing strategy for a Facebook account. This producer can write strong/concise social copy on any platform and blog posts for our weekly newsletter. The individual in this role can work quickly and carefully under deadline, excels at developing relationships with colleagues and talent, and quickly adapts to the ever-changing social/digital environment.

Digital Producer (WQXP - NYC)

This position reports to the Senior Producer, NYPR Music and will be responsible for managing an extensive team of inspired hosts and contributors with diverse musical tastes on building their radio and online programming and expanding their social profiles. The ideal candidate will have years of experience developing far-reaching social strategies around diverse personalities and musical thinkers that reach millions of monthly listeners; will work to channel the diverse corners of the New York new-music scenes into a cohesive radio station and website unified by personality, discovery, and companionship; will have responsibilities ranging from the operational, social, and music-tech.

Talent Buyer (Gypsy Sally’s - Washington D.C.)

Gypsy Sally’s, a prominent, independent live music venue in Washington DC, is seeking an experienced self-starter who is passionate and motivated about independent live music. Like us, you have an entrepreneurial spirit that is imaginative, innovative and forward thinking. You don’t need to be told not to settle for the status quo, but you are flexible when necessary and firm when it counts. You have a wide range in musical tastes and are fluent in Jam Band, Americana, Blue/Jamgrass, Funk, Country (the good kind), Indie Folk, etc.

Music Writer Interns (Roots Magazine - Nashville, TN)

Roots Magazine is a music publication which focuses on Americana and Country music within the industry. We are looking for music lovers that are looking for a career in music publications. If you ever wanted to write for a magazine, this could be your chance. We are looking for music loving writers to contribute album reviews, interview artists, cover and write about specific music festivals and live performances of artists. Must have the ability to write and engage an audience with your words. Interns must be able to meet deadlines and take direction.

Creative Imaging Director (Cumulus Media - Chicago, IL)

The right candidate will pull together & create several different areas of audio content for distribution on our various platforms. This is a fast paced, quick of thought & wit position. You will work hand in hand with our incredibly talented VO and Imaging guru Dan Stone to create strong theatre of the mind messaging magic.

Manager, Creative Music Integration (Viacom - Hollywood, CA)

The Manager of Creative Music + Licensing Strategy will work with VP to manage the use of music within Viacom content (MTV, VH1, Logo, Comedy Central, BET + International) from a creative licensing POV, working closely with Production, Development, Music Talent Department, Brand Creative, Digital, Social, MML and the Music Services team.

SNR Executive Producer / On Air (iHeartMedia - Pittsburgh, PA)

Creates, directs and produces highly regarded shows and programs in one or more radio stations.

Prime Time On-Air Talent (WYNN-FM - Florence, SC)

How would you like the opportunity to represent the top Urban radio brand in Florence, SC? WYNN-FM is searching for an experience and energetic on-air talent that enjoys being involved with the local community.

Music Coordinator (Songtradr - Santa Monica, CA)

Are you a music tastemaker and want to help correct problems with today’s music industry? Do you obsess over current music trends? Do you like to help solve customer’s problems? Do you want to be directly involved in the success of the company you work for? Do you enjoy being part of a team and have a positive attitude?

If this is you, come join our growing team! We are the fastest-growing music licensing marketplace and artist site in the World. Please send us your resume and cover letter explaining why you would make a great addition to our staff. A cool and inspiring team is waiting for you!

Program Director (KZCH - Wichita, KS)

CHR – Channel 96-3 – KZCH - Wichita, KS. iHeartMedia Wichita is looking for their next CHR Program Director and PM Drive Talent . Are you ready to make your next move and grow your Program expertise? Do you have mad passion for radio and willing to take direction, work in a fast paced environment and stay the course until the job is done? Excellent On-Air delivery, Minimum 2 years’ experience on G Selector and imaging skills are a must. Do you eat, drink and breathe Social media? You’ll need to be on point with your street presence, have street smarts, and be willing to drive revenue. Must also have promotional skills and vision. A minimum of three years’ experience in a competitive commercial radio environment are required. Do you have what it takes?

Part-Time Music Researcher (BMI - Panama City, FL)

Occasional part-time hourly work with hours ranging from 0-25 hours per week depending on availability of assignments. Work consists of music and market research in businesses in various states. Assignments include onsite research in businesses during late evenings, including weekends, and may require travel and overnight stay. Assignments also require completion of detailed reports following on-site visits.

Assistant Program Director/On-Air Talent (Radio One - Charlotte, NC)

To competently* and professionally* optimize all music elements; assist with administration duties in the Programming Department. To competently* and professionally* provide continuity and surveillance information in a professional, knowledgeable and entertaining way and will be active in pre-show strategy and execution while staying within the negotiated job responsibilities at all times.

Independent Label Relations Representative (Apple - Culver City, CA)

The Independent Label Relations Representative is responsible for managing relationships, developing content and maximizing revenue opportunities for independent label partners. This role works cross-functionally to facilitate business and operational needs, with the ultimate goal of identifying and driving mutual growth opportunities.

Coordinator, A&R Administration (UMG - NYC)

The Coordinator, A&R Admin, will act as the liaison between A&R, artists/management and all participants of the recording process to ensure the successful and timely delivery of album releases by successfully accomplishing all responsibilities.

Catalog Specialist, Amazon Digital Music (Amazon - Seattle, WA)

The Digital Music Operations team is responsible for generating content for Amazon’s various digital music services. Our goal is to build technologies and processes that create distinctive products for our customers and services for our label partners. The Digital Music Operations team manages the global digital supply chain of content, from partner deliveries to publishing on Amazon’s storefronts and devices. The Catalog Specialist is responsible for supporting the Digital Music experience through creating and upholding metadata standards. This includes managing the daily quality control of content, prioritization of work queues, and auditing and editing music metadata. If you love music and want to be a part of the Digital Music revolution – this is the place to start!

Music Enthusiast (Heidi Music Company - Appleton, WI)

Heid Music is looking for a part-time Retail Sales Music Enthusiast to join our Appleton team. We select team members that share our value of providing “Bravo” customer service as well as our passion for making music.

Music Enthusiasts are critical to Heidi Music’s success in creating and maintaining a “Bravo” customer service experience. This position builds and maintains relationships by assisting customers in the selection and purchase of Heidi Music’s musical merchandise. Music Enthusiasts also get involved in our many community and school events promoting music to people of all ages.

Rap Music Talent Manager (SORS MEdia - Los Angeles, CA)

We are searching for the right Talent Manager to Represent two of our Rappers; the Artists are signed at our Talent Management Company: SORS Media, LLC. We are seeking the right Talent Manager who has the experience and understanding with the background and skill sets and KNOWLEDGE of what a Talent Manager does on a daily basis with Talent and how to work within a company structure, as well as, being able to follow our processes on a daily basis.

Music Festival Intern (Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival - Charlottesville, VA)

Planning is underway for the 19th annual Festival, and we are seeking a college intern to work alongside the Festival Manager, ideally from May-August. While it’s an unpaid internship, we cannot stress how hands on and insightful this internship is, as you will essentially observe and contribute to a Festival from start to finish (what a fabulous resume booster and letter of recommendation opportunity). It’s an ideal role for an undergraduate student with experience and passion for music events and marketing who can potentially come back for some of our performances in September. We’re looking for someone who can come into the office 3 times a week, but we are willing to work around our ideal candidate’s schedule.

[anettrolikova]

Your self-doubt and uncertainty aren’t “part of the journey”, they also convey you know you have more to learn, you’re humble, and you’re open to constructive criticism. Your self-doubt and uncertainty indicate forthcoming success.

Right now, your greatest obstacle is overcoming impostor syndrome. The rest of this article unpacks how to gain more experience, but those tips will sound like fluff if you aren’t able to effectively manage your self-doubt.You’re hard work speaks for itself. 

You’ve mulled through and completed several programming courses, you’ve become a regular on Stack Overflow, and you’re genuinely interested in building a technical skill set. You are willing to do whatever it takes to land that technical role.

Here are two questions to ask yourself if you want to know you’re headed in the right direction:

Have you solved problems outside of your learning context?

Can you communicate what you’re learning in the simplest of terms?

Results don’t lie. You’re on the right path if you’re producing results outside of a tutorial and you feel comfortable talking through your subject matter.

Temporary contract roles are one of the most overlooked means of gaining experience. Many companies don’t have enough work or resources to hire a full-time software engineer, analyst, or data scientist so they look to hire a short-term contractor. I encourage you to use this to your advantage. Contract roles are perfect for people who want to gain experience because companies who hire for contract roles have very specific end goals in mind. As a result, you will work on very valuable and high-impact projects with clear deliverables. The best part? You also get paid.

Impostor syndrome and a lack of experience is difficult to manage. You’ve done a profound job of learning, pushing through adversity, asking relevant questions, and doing whatever it takes to land your first tech job. You heading in the right direction. The road ahead doesn’t get any easier, but you’re closer to a job offer than ever before-it’s only a matter of time until a company sees that and sends you a job offer.Your next opportunity awaits you. Go get ’em.

My notes: I just need to hear this kinds of words daily. I'm looking for landing a new job and I'm in desperate need of hearing this kind of motivational words. I hope this post or notes from this article will help you too. Cheers and good luck :) 

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

mo

How to make your firm more diverse and inclusive

Tips for chief executives

Print edition | Business

Nov 7th 2019

To: ceo

cc: pa

Subject: A hard-headed guide to corporate diversity

Dear David,

You face pressure to “do something” about diversity in your company—not only from your wife and woke children. Corporate clients increasingly demand it in your supply chain. Regulators, who use a “stable” or “inclusive” culture as a proxy for low risk, are breathing down your neck. Governments like Britain’s, which now mandates pay-gap reporting, insist on making more of your sensitive data public. And employees, including former ones, can air their complaints on social media.

Small wonder that 87% of your fellow bosses told consultants at pwc that diversity is a business priority. I’m sure you did, too. After all, you recently posted a job opening for a diversity manager. You were not alone; the number of such offers in Britain has doubled in the past year, say analysts at Glassdoor, a recruitment website. Since June 2017 more than 800 American ceos have signed a pledge to “advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace”.

That is where we are: lots of talk, plenty of initiatives, little change on the ground. Between 2015 and 2018 the share of female executives at large (mostly) American and British firms went from 12% to 14%; for ethnic minorities it moved from 12% to 13%. The ftse 100 has fewer female ceos (six) than it does bosses who share your name (seven). In American companies with over 100 employees, the share of black men in management was 3.4% in 2017, half their share in the population as a whole—and virtually unchanged from 3% in 1985. White women make up 25% of executives and senior managers, compared with 60% for white men. Something is clearly amiss.

In the past this letter would have gone straight to your legal department. Since the term “diversity” entered the corporate lexicon in the 1960s it has been code for avoiding lawsuits—especially in America, where companies have coughed up billions in fines for discrimination over the years. The financial sector still treats it mostly as a compliance issue.

Now you are no doubt tempted to forward it to someone in hr, almost certainly a woman with an arts degree, a sound moral compass and too little power. Don’t. This is your problem. Without your leadership it is unlikely to be solved soon.

Keep reading

Deep inside, you may be wondering if anything really needs solving. The short answer is: it does. With that in mind, you should ask yourself three things.

First, why does diversity matter to your firm? Is your reputation in trouble, as it was for Uber, Nike, Lloyd’s of London and others scarred by #MeToo? Do you, like consumer giants such as p&g, hope that more diversity makes for better products? Are you concerned about attracting and retaining bright sparks? You would be in good company: 97% of executives fret about increased competition for talent (according to Mercer’s hr consultants).

Or are you hoping that diversity will boost the bottom line? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if it does. It is hard to tell if diversity helps firms do well, or if successful firms are also more enlightened on other matters. But variety has been linked to innovation, productivity and, for example in diverse teams of surgeons, fewer mistakes. Lack of it breeds groupthink—which in turn can lead to disasters. The Bay of Pigs invasion and the Lehman Brothers collapse stemmed from narrow-mindedness. And employees who believe their firm cares about gender diversity are 40% more likely to be satisfied at work—and possibly more productive as a result.

Once you have sorted out the why, consider where you want to get to. Some firms, like Facebook, Nike or p&g, say they wish to mirror their customer base. Others are keen not to recruit from an artificially thin talent pool. Goldman Sachs claims its new entry-level recruitment targets—50% female and, in America, 14% Hispanic and 11% black—are based on things like graduation rates. Clear goals make it easier to assess if you are on track. But make them attainable. Qantas’s goal of 40% of its pilot intake to be female by 2028 is as admirable as it looks unrealistic: today just one in 20 pilots worldwide is a woman.

The third question concerns barriers that stop diverse talent from flourishing at your firm. Mapping how it flows through your organisation and where the blockages and leaks happen is a start. A McKinsey study of more than 300 companies identified the second step of the career ladder, from entry level to manager, as the “broken rung”: for every 100 men only 72 women (and just 68 Hispanic and 58 black ones) earned that critical early promotion. When Google was losing women in disproportionate numbers it homed in on maternity as the principal cause; the technology giant increased maternity leave and support for mothers returning to work.

Staff surveys can help, provided they are large and comprehensive enough. After its #MeToo moment, Lloyd’s, an insurance market, found that 45% of staff felt unable to raise concerns about improper conduct. Employees are now encouraged to speak up, including through a bullying-and-harassment helpline. A “culture dashboard” tracking progress on survey metrics will be published with the Lloyd’s annual report.

Now you’ve got your diversity-and-inclusion priorities straight and diagnosed what needs fixing. Good. Before you order a rainbow float for a Pride parade and send staff on a micro-aggression avoidance course, here is what not to do.

American firms spend billions a year on training. Half of large ones have unconscious-bias seminars. Most of these “d&i” programmes are a waste. Or worse: recent research from America shows that diversity statements can put off minorities, possibly because they perceive them as tokenism. Often, firms do d but forget i, which is about ensuring that the workforce is not just diverse, but thriving. Too many try to fix people instead of procedures. Training women to be more assertive in asking for a promotion or pay rise is pointless; they are just as likely to ask for these but also likelier to be seen as pushy when they do. Ushering your managers onto the “Check Your Blind Spots bus”, currently touring America as part of the ceos’ drive, is unlikely to do much. “Days of understanding”, popular in American offices, risk causing “diversity fatigue”. It is hard to beat bias out of individuals—easier to root it out of systems.

The don’ts

Take Silicon Valley. Big Tech has splurged on d&i to little effect. Representation of blacks and Hispanics has been flat (see chart). Girls Who Code, an industry-sponsored ngo, found that a quarter of young women who applied for internships at tech firms said they were asked inappropriate or biased questions. Others reported being flirted with or demeaned. It’s no use hiring diverse coders if the message then is: wear a hoodie and pretend to be a guy, or this is no place for you. They will underperform—or flee, leaving you as undiverse as before. Firms that do not change their ways beyond recruitment see high attrition rates of diverse talent. A lack of diversity is a symptom of deeper problems that a few diversity hires won’t mend.

At this point the how should be relatively clear. In a nutshell, it is all about creating a level playing field. When recruiting, software can mute biases by concealing giveaways to a candidate’s gender or ethnic identity. These include names but also less obvious hints like the sports they play. If only the usual suspects apply, look harder. Specialised recruitment drives, such as visiting “black” colleges or advertising in women’s forums, appear to work. The Bank of England no longer visits the Russell group of top universities, whose graduates apply in spades anyway, and focuses instead on less elite schools. bhp, an Anglo-Australian mining giant, broadened its search for female miners by recruiting from professions, such as nursing, with some similar skills.

In an effort to find trainees from different backgrounds, British law firms are trying “contextual recruitment”. An applicant with Bs from a school where everyone got Cs may be more impressive than one with As from a place full of A* pupils. Rare, a recruitment firm, has developed software which screens candidates for disadvantage and gauges their outperformance against the average for their school.

Once in the workplace, the clearer your criteria for professional advancement, the better. Informality is the enemy of women and minorities. It perpetuates bias. Surveys of American engineers and lawyers found that female workers were nearly twice as likely as their male peers to be saddled with “office housework”, like setting up meetings and conference calls. White men were likelier to be given careerenhancing tasks such as client meetings.

Sponsorship schemes are an effective way to ensure traditionally sidelined groups get a fair shot. PayScale, a pay-comparison site, found that employees with a sponsor made 11.6% more than those without. The Bank of England has offered most of its sponsorship places to ethnic-minority women. Staff surveys, if bite-sized but regular, can bring clarity to fuzzy inclusion metrics. “Psychological safety”, lingo for an environment where people feel free to speak their mind, can be tracked with questions like “are your ideas regularly attributed to someone else?” or “are you regularly interrupted in meetings?” Rotating who chairs a meeting, or a firm word with loudmouths who dominate it, can help.

Many employers—yourself included—would be horrified to learn that they implicitly require employees who want to be considered leadership material to adjust their behaviour. Women shouldn��t need to “act like a man”, gay employees to “act straight” or people with frizzy hair to treat it to “look professional” (ie, white). Let grievances fester and your workers will lose motivation or simply leave.

That is a lot to take in. But unless you do, your most valuable resource—workers—will not be as good as it could be. Best to get ahead of the problem. It isn’t that hard. And it can pay off mightily.

Yours,

Shareholder■

[fuccilloautomotive-blog]

Billy Fuccillo, Kia Soul transform driving in Southwest Florida

The man who transformed the cars people buy, drive or see on the roads of an entire region wore dark slacks and a red Tommy Bahama shirt.

Billy Fuccillo beckoned.

“Come and check out mine,” Fuccillo said of his white Kia Soul, similar to the 96 new ones available on his lot. His car featured an upgraded, 201 horsepower engine, leather seats, a navigation system and a panoramic sunroof.

“Of all the manufacturers I’ve represented in more than 30 years, the Soul is the only car that appeals to 18- and 19-year-olds and 78- and 80-year olds,” Fuccillo said. “People who are 52 like the Soul. People who are 32. People who are 18. People who are 80.”

Prior to Fuccillo Kia opening in December, 2010 at 404 NE Pine Island Road, in Cape Coral, no Kia-branded cars made the top 10 list of new, registered cars in the combined areas of Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties.

 Every year since 2011, at least three and sometimes four – the Soul, Optima, Forte and sometimes the Sorento – have made the top 10 for new cars registered in those six counties, according to data gathered by IHS Markit, a Michigan-based marketing firm.

Between opening more than six years ago and mid-July, Fuccillo Kia has sold 36,850 new cars. Of those, 24 percent, or 8,965, have been Souls. Kia corporate verified Fuccillo’s claim that the Cape Coral dealership is in fact the world’s largest Kia dealer in terms of volume.

Consider: Kia Soul ranked 29th of the nation’s top 398 new cars sold in 2016. The Kia Optima ranked 36th. But in Southwest Florida, those cars ranked sixth and fifth, respectively, according to IHS Markit.

 Gender-wise, 53 percent of the region's Soul drivers are female, and 47 percent are male, according to IHS Markit.

“Younger people like the car because it’s cute,” said Greg Hood, general manager of Galeana Kia, which also sells the Soul. “Older people like the car because it’s practical.”

Greg McCarter, 52 and from Cape Coral, stands 6 feet and weighs 450 pounds. He and his wife, Calondra, rented a Soul for a 2015 cross-country trip to California instead of their Toyota Sequoia, which gets 17 miles per gallon on the highway to the Soul’s 30-31.

“I didn’t think I was going to fit in it, because I’m a really big guy,” McCarter said of the Soul. “But once I got in it … I’ve got all kinds of pictures of every state that I was in with that Kia.”

This year, McCarter bought a 2017 Soul from Fuccillo for $20,000.

The Kia Soul demographics also include the 6-foot-3 Fuccillo, 61, who declares ad nauseam in numerous television and radio commercials and flyers that his cars are: “HUUUUU-JA!”

The marketing major, psychology minor and former tight end for the Syracuse University football team, drives his Soul when visiting Cape Coral from his Tampa home. He owns five Florida dealerships with a sixth in the planning stages for Clermont. He also owns 24 dealerships in upstate New York, where he sells more than a dozen brands of cars, including the Kia.

“You have an exceptional dealer in one area who does an exceptional job with one brand,” said Tom Libby, an automobile analyst for IHS Market. “That can raise the volume for a model or brand. It might be a part of the country that gravitates to a certain concept. Four-wheel drive vehicles traditionally do very well in mountain areas, for example.

“In the case of the Kia Soul, it’s most likely related to an exceptional dealer performance. Now I will say that the Kia Soul does well across the country, but it’s not in the top 10.”

 The beginning

In the fall of 2010, Fuccillo and Percy Vaughn, now the executive director of the southern region for Kia corporate, had dinner in Orlando. They discussed Fuccillo entering the sales market for the Korean brand in Southwest Florida, having had success in upstate New York.

At the time, Cape Coral was at the epicenter of the nation’s housing crisis. The economy was in shambles. Kia and Fuccillo took a gamble during a critical time at a location that had been an out-of-business Saturn dealership.

“He’s one of the most unique guys in the entire automotive industry,” Vaughn said. “He said, ‘I think I can make a big splash in this market.’ He came in and never looked back.

“With Billy, when he does these promotions, people come from as far away as Miami or Tampa. They would drive down to buy a car from him, even though we had other dealerships in those areas.”

In May of 2012, less than two years after opening, Fuccillo had a concert on the Cape Coral lot. He hired the classic rock band, Styx, which had top 40 hits such as "Come Sail Away."  The event drew thousands of fans. Fuccillo said he sold dozens of cars.

Billy Fuccillo said at the start of each year, he sets a marketing budget, usually about $350,000 to $850,000 a month.

“He’s very aggressive,” Libby said. “He’s motivated. He’s very shrewd. That concert you mentioned probably drew an audience that was a good fit for the Soul.”

In 1996, Fuccillo had Robbie Knievel, son of daredevil Evil Knievel, jump his motorcycle over 19 cars outside his Adams, New York, dealership. Fuccillo said he sold a record 523 cars in one day.

“When I got out of college, I went to a Chevy dealer in Buffalo, looking for a job in sales,” Fuccillo said of 1978. He was turned down three times.

“The fourth time I went back, they finally hired me.”

 Big man, big personality

Fuccillo worked his way into buying dealerships. He once bought a Hyundai store in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he went by the handle “Billy Fernandez” and did his “H-U-G-E!” catchphrase. He said he bought the bankrupt store for $25,000 and sold it two years later to Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller for $7 million.

Xavier Villarreal, a Fort Myers High School graduate and Hall of Fame football player there, worked in sales and then as a manager at Sam Galloway Ford in Fort Myers. In late 2010, he applied to be the general manager of Fuccillo Kia.

Fuccillo told Villarreal he wanted him to train in Rochester, New York, and to pack his bags.

Villarreal said he hadn’t had time to book a flight yet.

“Who do you think I am?” Fuccillo told Villarreal. “I’ve got my Lear jet waiting for you at the airport.”

“Thirty minutes later, I’m 10,000 feet in the air, taking off and heading to New York,” Villarreal said. “I spent four weeks there. I never saw all of this coming. I know a lot of people in the community. I know what this community is about. But I never foresaw it being on the scale that it became on a day-to-day basis.

“He has a heart of gold. I know sometimes people wish he could do more. There’s always somebody in need. But with what he does for our customers – 70 to 80 percent of our customers come back and buy another car from us.”

The competition

The Kia brand already existed in the region prior to Fuccillo’s arrival. Galeana Kia, at 14483 S. Tamiami Trail in Fort Myers and Airport Kia at 3325 Westview Drive, Naples, each opened in 1996.

Both dealerships compete for sales against Billy Fuccillo but appreciate him as well.

“I love him,” said Greg Hood, general manager of Galeana Kia for the past two years. “When I was offered this job, my boss said, ‘The No. 1 Kia dealer in the world is about 8.5 miles from you.’ When I came to the store, I knew that Kia products were so well-branded in our market that I couldn’t fail. Billy Fuccillo came to town and raised awareness. He spent an enormous amount of money. We’ve also been a beneficiary of that.

“He has a tried-and-proven formula. He floods the market, and they respond to it. The difference between him and me is, first of all, it’s not my money.”

Hood said at first, Fuccillo outsold Galeana Kia at a 10-to-1 clip. That has been narrowed, he said, to about 2.5-to-1.

But Galeana Kia doesn’t have to beat Fuccillo Kia to be successful, Hood said.

“His method was to focus on new car sales,” Hood said. “He didn’t care as much about used cars. We don’t do it that way. Our desire is to sell both, because they’re both good markets.”

Lots of Soul

The Soul base model starts at $16,100 with a manual transmission and $18,795 with an automatic, although the dealership has various incentive programs that could drop those prices. The new, fully loaded, “Exclaim” model Fuccillo drives goes for about $26,500, minus incentives.

“I love the car,” said Francesca Simonelli, 46, a Cape Coral yoga instructor. She has bought two Souls from Fuccillo, a green one in 2012 and then a gray one last summer. “I love the look of it. It’s all very practical for me.

“My credit was shot. I had filed for bankruptcy. I knew if anybody was going to get me a car, it was going to be that guy. He’s in it for the money, obviously. He was going to make it work. It was like a dream come true.”

Lisa Terrill, 44, and the manager of the Bayfront Bistro restaurant on Fort Myers Beach, bought her green Soul from Fuccillo four years ago. Her Volkswagen Passat had been totaled in an accident, hence the need for a new car. Her Soul from Fuccillo included a trip to Miami Beach with a one-night stay in a resort and a party, another of the dealership’s many promotions.

“At first, I was kind of annoyed by all the commercials,” Terrill said. “But when it came down to it, they had a good reputation or so many wouldn’t be purchasing it from them.

“I will tell you this, I would take that car a million times on a road trip. It’s a smooth ride. It’s very roomy on the inside. It’s like a SUV, really, but with great gas mileage.”

McCarter, Simonelli and Terrill all said they had poor credit at the time of their purchases. Billy Fuccillo Kia found them loans ranging from 72 to 75 months at interest rates between 4.9 and 6 percent.

The business of buying and selling cars worked out for all parties.

Working the room

When Billy Fuccillo visits his Cape Coral dealership, he does not keep a low profile. He works the showroom, posing for pictures with potential buyers. He hams it up with the sales staff.

In his office, Fuccillo, a New York Yankees fan, has some sports memorabilia and posters and a framed photograph of Robbie Knievel’s motorcycle jump.

Fuccillo defended his dealership’s practice of selling cars to customers with low credit scores. He’s aware of a negative article about that practice that has been floating around on Facebook.

“How are you going to get people financed?” Fuccillo said. “I think we did a lot of things to get the community turned around, and they in turn, helped us. Sell cars, that’s what we’re here to do.

“We don’t know what transpires in their life. We work real hard to get them financed. So many people are living week-to-week. We find them the best rates we can.”

Fuccillo finished a photo shoot and then an on-camera interview. At the end, he was asked to do his famous catchphrase.

“Catchphrase? What catchphrase?” Fuccillo said, before looking into the camera and getting back into character. “Southwest Florida, it’s gonna be HUUUUU-JA!”

 Source: http://www.fdlreporter.com/story/news/2017/07/26/billy-fuccillo-kia-soul-transform-driving-southwest-florida/472714001/

[toddbirchard-architect]

Data Engineering, Big Data, and Other Vague Vocabulary https://ift.tt/2Kh85xj

I've spent the majority of my life dreading an eternal question that governs our lives. You know the one. It's the one that comes after our ritualistic handshakes and "nice to meet you"s. The one that summarizes our place in society, in 5 words or less: "what do you?"

Most managers never seem to have this problem. My previous peers in product or engineering management roles had little trouble letting others fill in the blanks for them, but I've never been one comfortable with accepting hyperbolic inferences. For non-producing members of skilled teams, I doubt the integrity of one who nods in response to "oh, so you're the boss?" I instead relived groundhog day eternally, watching the progression where an acquaintance's eagerness to care deteriorates into realizing they don't.

A lifetime later, I landed my first title as a data engineer, and boy did that feel great! After years of enduring the cocktail-party-existential-crises, I had a real title. Fine, "manager" is a title, but this title had tangible substance! The first chance I had to introduce myself as a Data Engineer happened to be in Ibiza, in all places. As it turns out, an American stranded in Spain making friends with somebody from Bosnia has its language barriers, so the phrase "data engineer" wasn't quite translating well. The best stand-in explanation I could find was "hacker."

Data Engineers Are Definitely Not Hackers

I had a lot of assumptions about what it meant to be a "data engineer" going into it, and none of them were particularly outrageous. I'd had my hand in software development for over ten years at the time. The boom of mainstream data science bit be like a bug, like the rest of us, and something about the problems we could solve seemed to make software fun again. We weren't building worthless landing pages, or tired login screens. Instead, we could write sports betting algorithms, or mine the world's unprotected data. I already loved engineering like I loved Oreos, and this particular flavor of engineering felt like taking two Oreos apart and stick them back together: less of the lame stuff, more of the awesome stuff.

Data Engineering isn't really Software Engineering

Obviously you need to be a software engineer to some capacity to be a data engineer. That said, the concerns of data engineers fall further away from the tree than I ever initially anticipated.

Most programming work I engaged in before data revolved heavily around algorithms, whether I realized it at the time or not. Building consumer and business-facing products entails more moving parts than any single human can account for. Software worth using is an effort between many people accountable for many services, which make up some abstract entity used by vast quantities of unreasonable people (I kid). The challenge of engineering something complex comes in the clever decisions we make to leverage simplicity. The first time I ever dissected a Walkman, or took the lid off a toilet, or taken apart a mechanical pen, the reaction is always the same: "that's it?" And yet, "that's quite genius."

A Day In The Life

The skills and duties of data engineering teams zero consistency between companies. Some shops integrate data engineers with data scientists and analysts to supplement those teams. Other companies have massively siloed "big data" teams, which are almost always made up of Java developers who have seemingly found a comfortable (and lucrative) niché, forever married to MapReduce without the burdens of cross-department communication. Unfortunately, this scenario is far more common.

Most of a data engineer’s responsibilities revolve around ETL: the art of moving data from over there to over here. Or, perhaps also there. And yet, likely here, there, and there (and oh yeah, it nothing is allowed to break, even though those things are different). The concept feels straightforward. It is. We're also dealing with incomprehensibly massive amounts of data, so it's also repetitively stressful. Straightforward and stressful aren't the sexiest adjectives to live by.

Tools Over Talent

Luckily for us, our company isn't the first company to work with data- that’s where our predetermined catalog of “big data” tools comes in. No matter how different data teams are between companies, the inescapable common ground is that data Engineering is largely about tools. We’re talking Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Airflow, Apache 2: Electric Boogaloo, and so forth.  

Working with each of these things is a proprietary skill of its own. PySpark is essentially its own language masquerading as Python. Hadoop's complexity serves little purpose other than to ensure old school data engineers have jobs. Each of these tools are behemoths, each of which was created to do a very specific thing in a very specific way. Becoming adept at Spark doesn’t make you a better engineer, or a problem solver: it just makes you good at using Spark. Airflow is a powerful tool for organizing and building data pipelines. With all it’s included bells and whistles, Airflow offers teams power and structure at no cost. It’s obvious that Airflow (and equivalent) are “the right tool” upon using it, but structure comes at a price to human beings. It’s only a matter of time before I’m aware I’m mindlessly executing things in the only possible fashion they might be executed. Unlike building complex systems, it feels like data engineering only has so much room for clever optimization.  

This doesn’t seem so bad to a 9-5 worker looking to live their non-office lives: hoarding lucrative knowledge is an easy way to pay the bills. What bothers me is this mindset can only prevail if the person harnessing does not actually enjoy programming. In every software engineering interview I've ever had, there's inevitably been some sort of hour-long algorithm whiteboard session where you optimize your brute force O(n^2) algorithm to O(n). While those are stressful, people who enjoy programming usually walk out of those interviews feeling like they enjoyed it. I've never been asked an algorithm question in a data engineering interview. Those go more like this:

Have you ever had a situation where you had to configure a Kafkta instance using the 76C-X configuration variable on the 27 of May during a full moon?

I see you've worked with SQS, Kinesis, Kafka, Pub/Sub, and RabbitMQ, but have you ever worked with [obscure equivalent service this company uses, with the implication that it isn't exactly the same]

I know you're not too hot on Hadoop, but can you tell me about the inner workings of this specific feature before it was depreciated 3 years ago anyway?

I'm running a PC with 4 cores and 16 gigs of ram, looking to parse a 200,000-line JSON file while vacationing with my family in Aruba. Which Python library would you use to engage Python's secret Hyperthreaded Voltron I/O Super Saiyan skill, and what kind of load would my machine be under as a result?

I'm barely kidding about these... even the last one. If Silicon Valley's primary hiring philosophy prioritizes smart people who can learn, data engineering interviews measure whether your wealth of useless trivia is culturally acceptable by people who value that sort of thing.

We Need To Address "Big Data"

I've been making some vast generalizations so far. I don't truly believe all data engineers share the same personality traits. In fact, there are at least two kinds of data people in this world: people who say "big data" unironically, and those who don't. I'm the latter. The complaints I have about our profession are directed at the former.

There's a big difference between a startup looking to "revolutionize the world with AI," and startups looking to leverage machine learning to optimize a case where it makes sense. Given the cheapness and implied misunderstanding of the term, simply hearing the phrase "AI" in a conversation has me questioning credibility. Don't get me started on Blockchain.

Big data has no actual definition other than "a lot of data." Trying to track down the origins of the phrase results in endless pages of data companies spewing absurd jargon (and hilariously copy+pasted definitions from one another), proudly aligning themselves with the new world order of Big Data. One article titled "A Brief History of Big Data" starts at the year 18,000 BCE. Get over yourselves.

In reality, the phrase "Big Data" started to pick up pace around 2012:

trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"big data","geo":"","time":"2004-01-01 2019-06-29"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=all&q=big%20data","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});

We have Doug Laney to blame for coining the phrase in 2001, but if I had to guess, the trend seems much more closely correlated with the rise of Hadoop.

Hadoop enabled companies to work with and process much larger data than before, thus "Big Data" was technically relatively accurate. Java was by far the most common programming language being learned by new developers, being the de facto choice for school curriculum and general programming. I imagine it was an easy choice for many to double down on the language they knew by leveraging their knowledge and being Hadoop subject-matter experts. That's twice the job security and twice the skills!

Most people I know who overly emphasize their "big data" expertise are in fact Java/Hadoop guys. They're quick to ask how many petabytes or exabytes of data your last pipeline ran, fiercely keeping the gate open for only the Biggest of Data. They don't want to learn new programming languages. They don't want to see which data warehouse best fits their needs by reading the whitepapers. They don't want to question if it's really necessary for a cluster of hundreds of nodes to run small nightly jobs. They want to cling to a time where they made two good consecutive life decisions and partied to the Big Data anthem.

Bigger Doesn't Mean Better

Some data engineers are exactly what their titles imply: engineers with a specialty in data. On the other side of this, there's a rampant culture of gatekeeping and self-preservation which is almost certainly destroying company budgets in ways which aren't visible.

Data engineering teams with headcounts in the double-digits clock 8 hours a day, over-implementing systems too obsolete to turn profits for Cloudera, Hortonworks, or MapR. If these teams had consisted of software engineers as opposed to big data engineers, we would have teams focused on creating the best solutions over the easiest ones.

July 31, 2019 at 12:24AM

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/cannabis-marijuana-weed-pot-just-call-it-a-job-machine/

Cannabis, Marijuana, Weed, Pot? Just Call It a Job Machine

SAN FRANCISCO — David Dancer is a 48-year-old marketing executive who has worked for big brands like Charles Schwab and Teleflora. A year ago, he got a call from a recruiter for a different kind of company: MedMen, a cannabis retailer that has been called “the Apple Store of weed.” The opening was for a chief marketing officer. He took it.

One of Mr. Dancer’s early projects was a slick two-minute video by the director Spike Jonze that begins with an anecdote about George Washington as a hemp grower, a staple of dorm-room conversation. It concludes with a suburban couple coming home with a bright red bag of legally purchased pot, symbolizing “the new normal” — an ending that, like his own career twist, seemed improbable not long ago.

“It can and should be a part of anyone’s everyday life,” Mr. Dancer said in a recent interview, sounding very much like a man who has been hired to do marketing.

Although cannabis remains illegal on the federal level, 33 states now allow its sale at least for medical purposes. Ten of them, including California, have legalized recreational use. And as new markets open and capital continues to flood in, the cannabis industry has become, by some measures, one of the country’s fastest-growing job sectors.

The jobs range from hourly work at farms and stores to executive positions. They also span the country. Columbia Care, a medical cannabis company that is based in New York and has 500 employees, has indoor farms and manufacturing plants in Massachusetts, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Arizona and the District of Columbia.

It’s hard to know exactly how many jobs there are in the legal cannabis business. The United States Labor Department collects data from cannabis farms and retailers, but does not provide figures for the industry. Still, listings for cannabis-related positions have rocketed to the top echelon of the fastest-growing-job categories on sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter.

Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, said the company’s data put the number of cannabis jobs nationwide at 200,000 to 300,000. Most of those jobs are on the lower end of the pay scale, consisting of rote agricultural work like plant trimming ($10 to $15 an hour) and “budtenders” (about $25,000 a year), who help customers decide what kind of cannabis they want and then weigh and bag it.

But as the industry expands, there has also been a strong demand for better-paid positions like chemists, software engineers, and nurses who consult with patients about using cannabis for anxiety and other medical conditions.

“The early signs are that this will grow rapidly,” Ms. Pollak said.

A few years ago, navigating the marijuana industry felt like a journey to the fringes of legitimacy. Cannabis-prescribing doctors set up shop in strip malls and record stores, or consulted with patients over brief video chats. Dispensaries were often in barred storefronts, and their employees had to engage in the charade of scolding their prescription-bearing customers if they talked about sharing purchases with friends.

Now cannabis dispensaries occupy brightly lit spaces on prime retail strips that have showcase buds in glass cases and tinctures in small squeezer bottles, along with $80 pot lotions and $20 bars of pot soap. Six months ago, Canada became the first major world economy to legalize recreational marijuana use, and several dozen cannabis stocks — many for companies that are American in all but name but unable to list in the United States — now trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

Vivien Azer, a managing director at Cowen in New York, became the first major Wall Street analyst to follow the cannabis industry in 2016. She has since been joined by competitors at Jefferies and Piper Jaffray, and cannabis companies now attend investor events alongside big consumer products companies like Kellogg, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. Ms. Azer projects that the legal United States cannabis market will grow to $80 billion by 2030, a forecast that assumes federal legalization.

Ms. Azer tracked alcohol and tobacco companies, and cannabis seemed a natural extension. “I’m just talking about them as stocks like any other stock that I cover,” she said.

For investors, it’s a two-pronged thesis. The first is that many people like recreational use. The second is that as cannabis becomes more widely used, in particular the strains rich in cannabidiol, or CBD, it is increasingly a therapeutic remedy that people substitute for pain pills, sleep aids and other pharmaceuticals.

The pioneers who brought the industry out of the shadows are being joined by professional managers and executives — “talent,” in corporate speak — who have had careers in other industries. For upper-level managers and executives, companies say they prefer candidates with a background in highly regulated industries like alcohol or pharmaceuticals.

Steve DeAngelo’s website calls him the “Father of the Cannabis Industry” and has a picture of him, smiling, in what pot enthusiasts know as his trademark look of a blue fedora atop graying Willie Nelson braids that rest on the shoulders of his jacket. And there he was in the same get-up on a recent Friday afternoon, standing by a pair of A.T.M.s watching the long line of customers waiting to buy cannabis at Harborside, a cannabis dispensary and farming company that he and a partner founded in 2006 in Oakland, Calif.

Mr. DeAngelo was there to introduce Menna Tesfatsion, his company’s new chief operating officer. Whereas Mr. DeAngelo’s background includes a history of radical politics, interviews in High Times and an arrest for marijuana possession, Mr. Tesfatsion is a lawyer who worked in real estate and property development before getting into the cannabis industry.

“It’s a generational opportunity,” said Mr. Tesfatsion, who was wearing a vest, as Bay Area executives do. “We’re just beginning to scale.”

Mr. DeAngelo said the ability to attract professional managers would go a long way toward determining how well cannabis companies did from here.

“We’re the world’s best experts in cannabis,” he said of the early entrepreneurs. “But we didn’t have much opportunity to learn mainstream business skill sets like finance and compliance and marketing and real estate.”

Eager to shake the image of being high-end drug dealers, cannabis companies have become hypersensitive to anything that sounds unprofessional — hence the insistence on calling the substance cannabis instead of pot, weed or marijuana. Buds are “flower.” Hash is “extract.” Stoners are “high per-capita consumption consumers.”

Bryan Passman, a longtime executive search consultant in Miami, recently started a cannabis-centric recruiting firm. It was originally called The Grass Is Greener Global (The GIGG), but he changed it to Hunter & Esquire because clients told him that they’d prefer he had a more professional-sounding name.

Mr. Passman advises interviewees that if they want to let a prospective cannabis employer know that they partake in the company’s product, they should avoid saying, “I like to smoke pot,” and instead try something like “I have a relationship with the plant.”

The idea, he said, is to be “purposefully subtle.”

Jobs in the industry come with a few caveats. Because cannabis is still illegal from the federal perspective, noncitizens should probably stay away for now, lest they risk their immigration status, Mr. Passman advises. If you’re collecting a federal pension, you should consult a financial adviser to see if it’s at risk. Also: Be realistic about the stigma you might face from employers in other industries.

After a decade in pharmaceutical marketing at companies including Gilead Sciences, Julie Raque recently became the vice president for marketing at Cannabistry Labs, a cannabis research and testing company in Chicago. She was intrigued by the industry and eager to join a start-up, but had to take a pay cut in exchange for company stock — and to accept that her decision might be a one-way door.

“I highly doubt companies would want to hire me back,” she said. “I knew I was about to do something big, and since then I’ve not looked back, because I’m having so much fun.”

[theresawelchy]

Data Science For Business (comprehensive introduction for online businesses)

Doing Data Science without a sense of business is like playing chess without the kings on the board. For every business, making its products or services better is the ultimate goal of a data science project. Leaving that out of the picture is nonsensical.

Your data team could feature the best coders and the best statisticians, but if they don’t know the actual business application of their data projects, the whole thing will be pointless.

The business data science mindset

Did you notice that I wrote that the goal is to improve the quality of the product or service and not to generate more profit? This doesn’t mean that you won’t make more money because of your data science projects. I rather want to highlight the priorities.

On a high level, you can achieve two things with data science.

#1 Understanding your audience better. Learning about their needs, their struggles, their motivations, their habits and their relationships to your product or service.

#2 Using this understanding to create a better product or service and turning that into profit.

The order is important.

Your number one priority should be to help your users. As a consequence of that, your product or service will flourish. And that better product or service will bring you more users, more returning users and eventually more revenue.

the business data science mindset

If you like this mindset, you will like this article. If not, then maybe it’s not for you.

Note: I wrote this article mostly for online businesses. If you are not running an online business, you can still make the analogies and apply the things you learn here to your own specific use case.

A data science project step-by-step

From data to information – and from information to better decisions

At its core, (almost) every data project plays the same role in your business. Data science helps you make easier, faster and better decisions.

As simple as it sounds as complicated it can get in real life.

Let’s take a look at the typical six steps of a data science project:

Data Collection

Data Storage

Data Cleaning

Data Analysis

Communication, data visualization

Data-driven Decision

the typical six steps of a data science project

Every step has its own challenges. Let’s go through them one by one so I can show you the major challenges you should be aware of at each step – to prevent or solve them.

(1) Data Collection – where many businesses fail already

“Garbage in, garbage out.” – as the well known data principle says. And it’s true.

Too many data projects fail at this very first step. Too many companies collect incomplete, unreliable data and everything they do after that… is just messed up.

Real story from a real company: we were doing an A/B test as the last phase of a 2-month comprehensive study. It was a complex experiment, with many funnel steps and webpages included. It should have run for 30 days to collect enough data points for a statistically significant result…

The only problem was that around the end of the second week of the experiment, a freshly hired junior developer removed one of our tracking codes from one of the webpages we tested. (He said he didn’t know what the code snippet did, so he deleted it. I was fuming. I still am when I recall this story.)

The point is: we realized only at the end of the 30-day test period that the code was removed. Even though it was only one minor subpage (the issue caused an estimated ~5-10% data discrepancy), we had to trash the whole A/B testing project and restart it from day one because half of the experiment was based on skewed data.

The worst thing in this story was not that we had to re-run an A/B test – but that we could never trust our data again. We always had to double-check and triple-check everything before we made conclusions. And that slowed us down for months.

The moral of the story is: proper tracking and data collection is crucial for every business doing data science. My specific recommendation is to have at least one person in your team who’s responsible for data collection and who double-checks everything to do with it at least once a month.

What to collect?

I get many questions about what to collect and what not to collect. I’ll get back to this in detail in an upcoming article. My general answer until then: it depends on many things.

At the companies I’m working with, we almost always do workshops to figure out what we need to collect and how.

The general idea is to collect everything you can – because data storage is relatively cheap nowadays.

v0.1 draft from a data collection specification

But you have to keep in mind that the more things you track on your website:

the more engineering time you should allocate to implement and maintain tracking

the slower your website or application will be (we are talking about microseconds here – but it can add up easily)

the more complex your data infrastructure becomes

and so on…

Note: also consider legal and ethical aspects!

(2) Data Storage and (3) Data Cleaning – automate it and don’t forget to maintain it

Data storage and data cleaning are the responsibility of data engineers. It’s a highly technical job but usually you don’t have to worry about it too much. Not that it’s easy or unimportant. It’s just that it’s a well-defined job, so when you hire a (good) data engineer, she will know exactly how to take care of this part of your data business. There are not too many pitfalls. Plus, a big part of it can be automated, so it’s very convenient.

Although this is not a major threat for your business, I have a story where a (data scientist) friend of mine came to his office in the morning, opened his laptop… And realized that they had just lost around 40% of their historical data overnight.

I was in their office that day, and I can tell you: I’ve never seen data engineers that stressed. Ever. (By the way, the problem was an unexpected software update that caused an important data cleaning script to break.) Luckily, they were smart enough to prepare for this event and they had backups of their historical data on other servers.

Still, this spotlights very well that data storage and data cleaning is a project that you should continuously maintain — and a place you should be prepared for “crisis situations,” too.

Big Data

One more thing about data storage… This is the right place to talk about “big data.”

It’s a common buzzword in business data science. Many books have a catchy title featuring “Big Data.” Many journalists are using it in thinkpieces. Many managers like to say it…

Dan Ariely put it right:

“Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…”

Dan Ariely

What really is big data?

First of all, it’s a technical concept.

Let me add another story to explain what it is. (It will also help you figure out when you need it.)

At a startup I worked with, we had around ~100,000 users when we first set up our automated data cleaning and analytics scripts. A few scripts ran every midnight, and when we arrived at the office, the updated numbers had automatically been added to the company dashboards.

All very nice and clean.

However, the company grew fast.

Fast forward 2.5 years: we had ~10,000,000 users (that’s 100 times more users), much more complex data logs (because we wanted to collect more detailed data), many more automated data scripts (because we wanted to monitor more things)… in one sentence: our data servers had to deal with an exponentially and continuously growing workload.

Until one day, we got to the office and our new daily numbers didn’t show up on the dashboards. We took a look at the scripts — and they were still running. Even though we used a very powerful (and expensive) server to do all the computations and our scripts were written to be very efficient, they ended up running for more than 10 hours.

And that’s when big data technologies come into play. The concept of big data is to connect more than one computer to manage all these computations. Depending on your company (and data) size, it can easily be a cluster of 10, 100 or even 1000 computers. Sounds easy, but under the hood, using big data can be very challenging from a technical standpoint.

Example: an older version of a popular big data solution (Hadoop HDFS) explained visually.

Anyway, that’s what big data is in a nutshell.

Again: it’s highly technical and if you hire good (big) data engineers, they will know what to do.

Note: if you want to learn more about the technical part, the keywords you want to google are “apache spark” and “apache hadoop”.)

(4) Data Analysis – extracting value

This is where business data science gets exciting – for business people at least.

A data analyst is a sculptor. She gets a block of data and then she carves and carves until she gets something truly special.

And it’s a creative process, indeed. I’m a data analyst at heart and I know from experience that when you have an ocean of data in front of you, it can be very intimidating. Often, you don’t know where to start.

But there are a few guidelines that can help. Here are the top three that helped me:

1. Good questions. To get useful answers, you have to ask the right questions. That usually comes from the management (or other colleagues), who already have suspicions based on their experience. In this case, a data analyst’s primary job is to prove or disprove these suspicions (let’s call them hypotheses). Note: A common misbelief is that disproving a hypothesis is a step backwards. People are looking at it as the failure of an idea… That’s the wrong mindset, though. When a good data analyst proves or disproves an idea, she discovers many new things throughout the process, so she can offer one or more alternative solutions that are better than the original idea. Let me also emphasize the good in the phrase “good question.” Answering bad questions sets back a data project significantly. Bad questions can be:

Unimportant questions (“What happens if we change the logo size by one pixel?”)

Questions that aren’t business related.

Vague questions (“How do people like us?”)

Or questions that we don’t (and won’t) have data to answer.

2. Qualitative research. Often, when I don’t know where to start with my data analysis, I go to the UX department of the company I’m consulting for and take a look at their usability test results. Also, I really like to sit in on usability tests (or watch the recordings). There is nothing like seeing a real user interacting with your product. Watching just 5-6 UX tests will give you at least 10-20 ideas for where to start your analytics project.

3. Best practices. Now that I’m a more experienced data analyst I know quite a few data analysis techniques that it’s worth starting my research with. It really depends on the given data project and on the specific business use case. But at online businesses I usually start my discovery process with a funnel analysis, a segmentation or a retention analysis project. (More about this in later articles.)

If you start with business analytics today

If you start with data science for your business today, I’d recommend focusing on one specific thing before you do anything else.

That’s finding your single most important metric.

You’ll find as many names for this as there are books on the subject:

OMTM – One Metric That Matters (by Croll & Yoskovitz)

WIG – Wildly Important Goal (by McChesney & Covey)

North Star Metric (by Sean Ellis)

Etc.

Different names, same point:

You have to figure out your single most important metric.

And you should place this metric above every other metric you have — measure it and keep it as your main focus.

A good most important metric is:

simple (so everyone at your company understands it immediately)

measurable (so it’s an actual number)

describing your business goals really well (so it actually matters) and…

There is only one of it! (Yes, I know, it’s hard to find one metric. But it’s possible — and once you have it, it will be very useful!)

(Note: Actually there are a few more factors that make a good main metric… but let’s try to meet these four conditions first!)

Let’s take the simplest example: a mature e-commerce business.

What makes the best number one key metric for an online e-commerce business that’s been operating for more than 10 years?

Of course, it’s revenue! Why? Because it’s simple. (Profit, for instance, would be much harder to calculate and understand for everyone at your company.) It’s easy to measure. It reflects on the company’s business goals. And it’s one single metric. Perfect.

The situation is simple for mature e-commerce businesses. At other businesses (e.g. early phase startups, more complex business models, etc.), it can be much harder to figure it out. For many of my clients, finding the single most important metric takes multi-hour-long internal workshops.

workshop time – figuring out most important metrics

But so far everyone has been able to find it. So can you!

(5) Data Communication – data and information translated for business people

This is the step where most data science projects fail.

Interesting, isn’t it?

You can be the best analyst working with the finest data set in the world… But if you can’t communicate your findings efficiently, you will have zero impact.

That’s the nightmare of every data professional.

There are quite a few roadblocks here. And I’ve seen all of them: data-sceptic (or simply stupid) co-workers, over-complicated presentations, unreadable charts…

The fact is that everyone at your company needs to be involved in order to build a culture where people can communicate and use data.

I have two specific recommendations for you:

Educate! Data professionals should hold presentations every week – not just about their recent findings but also about why data science is important for the company. Start with things like what a data analyst does, how the data science business works, how colleagues can build self-serving data solutions for themselves, and so on. Business people should educate data scientists, as well. They should help them to create and deliver better presentations. I’m really grateful for the companies I worked with, because they sent me to presentation trainings regularly. Plus my managers also sat down with me to review my presentation before I presented it to the whole company – so we could make sure that I really nailed it on stage. It helped a lot for everyone.

Keep it simple. Everything about your communication should be as simple as it can be!

No fancy scientific words (you don’t want to show off),

no complicated charts (you don’t have to show everything),

no infinite emails (you want people to read what you write).

If you can show your data-driven takeaways in one line chart and explain them in one sentence, you should do it. Everyone will be happy about it.

Note: I wrote more about data presentation principles in this article: Presentation Tips for Data Professionals.

(6) Data-Driven Decision Making – why are data-driven managers important?

Have you ever heard the acronym “HIPPO”?

It stands for highest paid person’s opinion… and it was a well-established business decision-making method for decades…

Thanks to data science, it’s not the case anymore.

However, not every manager is ready for this to change. Even a very well-executed data project can (and will) fail at this point, just because you hurt someone’s feelings or ego. I know this sounds bad but this is the inconvenient truth. (Especially at larger companies with 500+ employees.)

You can prevent this by establishing a data-driven company culture early on. (I usually recommend to start to think about your data strategy when you have 10-50 employees.)

At a bigger company, it will be exponentially harder to make your organization data-driven.

It’s also important to send your managers to data workshops and make sure that they develop the right mindset.

Business Data Science = Compressing 10 billion data points into one “yes” or “no”!

Here are the six steps of an online business’s data science project again:

Data Collection

Data Storage

Data Cleaning

Data Analysis

Communication, data visualization

Data-driven Decision

the six steps of an online business’s data science project

Can you see how it’s all about compressing the infinite amount of data into a single yes-or-no decision?

It’s like distilling the essence from a meadow of flowers.

It takes hard work but it’s rewarding in every sense.

If you manage to collect the right data and use it well, you will be able to make better decisions more quickly and more easily. That will lead to a better product, happier customers and eventually more revenue.

And that’s what business data science is all about.

The 3 Major Data Science Business Applications

I want to talk a little bit more about STEP (3) Data Analysis, because it’s a very broad topic.

There are so many opportunities to turn your data into value.

More specifically, at online businesses, these are the three most common practical applications of data science:

(A) Business Analytics (aka Descriptive Analytics). It answers the questions of “what has happened in the past?” and “where are we now?” (E.g. reporting, measuring retention, finding the right user segments, funnel analysis, etc.)

(B) Predictive Analytics It answers the question, “what will happen in the future?” (E.g. early warning (predicting which user will cancel her subscription next month), predicting the marketing budget you will need in the next quarter, etc.)

(C) Data-Based Product A product that works using your historical data. (E.g. self-learning chatbots, recommendation systems, image recognition, voice recognition, etc.)

Which one of these brings the most business value?

To answer this question, your keyword is:

ROI – Return on Investment.

From a purely business perspective, data science is an investment of your resources, and you want to have some sort of return on it.

The question is: which project of the above three brings the biggest value for your business right now?

Business analytics? Predictive Analytics? Or developing a data-based product?

It’s an open question and one to which only you know the answer. But here’s a common pattern I see from my clients all the time.

Everyone is very excited about predictive analytics, machine learning and data-based products (like chatbots). Yet, many of these companies:

don’t have a clear funnel (that they measure step-by-step)

don’t know too much about their key metrics (not to speak of their most important metric),

don’t have clear numbers on their important user segments

heck, sometimes they don’t even know how many users (or paying users) they have

and so on…

These are all (A) business analytics and descriptive analytics questions.

And until you know the answer to these questions (and other simple but important business questions), you should not go for machine learning projects yet.

If you recognize yourself, my strong recommendation is: invest in business analytics and simple reports first. By answering the basics, you will generate tremendous business value: you will see more clearly and you will understand your audience better.

And who knows, maybe by learning your audience’s needs, you will map out a user-need for an image recognition system in your product, and in a few months (when the business data science fundamentals are already set) you can start to work on that, too.

Calculate return on investment, and go for the simpler data science projects first!

Conclusion

Summarizing everything, your business data science project will have six major steps:

Data Collection

Data Storage

Data Cleaning

Data Analysis (here you can work on business analytics or predictive analytics projects — or on data-based products)

Communication, data visualization

Data-driven Decision

All these steps come with unique challenges, and all together they build up into a complex system. This article gave you a few practical tips and tricks — but you will learn the big picture and put everything in context when you start to build up your own data infrastructure.

It’s a difficult project but it will bring you value on every level: better product(s), happier customers and more revenue!

Cheers, Tomi Mester

DataTau published first on DataTau

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WordStream Employee Spotlight: Taylor Chan

WordStream has some impressive employees in its ranks: from industry influencers to marathon runners, from analysts to authors. The Employee Spotlight series aims to highlight the talented individuals who work here. Each month, we’ll be featuring an interview here on the blog and on our social accounts.

For this month’s Employee Spotlight, we spoke with Taylor Chan. As a product manager here at WordStream, Taylor works closely with our engineering and design teams to design and build new product features.  Specifically, she oversees basic connections between our flagship software, WordStream Advisor, and ad platforms like Google Ads and Bing Ads. She also works on the 20-Minute Work Week (helping you make all your weekly optimizations in 20 minutes!) and a new, exciting feature called Strategies, which we’ll dive into imminently.

Originally from the Philadelphia area, Taylor graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Biological Engineering. She joined WordStream about a year ago, bringing with her no shortage of product development expertise, a passion for shrimp-filled spheres, and an irrefutable mastery of board games.

How long have you worked at WordStream?

I’ve worked here for just over a year— I started December 2017. I came from a company  that was much bigger, and everyone was super specialized in their roles. There were four or five flavors of product managers and you had to pick just one. I was really looking to join a smaller team—something that would help me learn a wider range of skills and continue to become more well-rounded. It’s been really great. I’m a lot closer to the strategy aspect of the business than I was previously, which is huge.  

How did you hear about WordStream? Why did you want to work here?

I worked in consulting for a little bit—manufacturing consulting. I have done a lot of strange things actually! At that time I was working in a water bottle factory and an almond factory on the ground floor trying to make their lines more efficient. I can’t say I joined WordStream for the marketing aspect, per se, but it’s been very cool learning it. I really didn’t know anything about it beforehand; it’s been crazy to learn what an integral part of our lives it is. But as far as what attracted me to the company, it was more about the people I’d get to work with and the size.

I found WordStream via a random job posting, but once I came in I really gelled with the people on the product team that I interviewed with. They seemed really thoughtful about their choices and what they were doing, which was something I wanted. The conversations felt natural with them.

Can you talk specifics about what your role involves?

I was originally hired specifically for the 20-Minute Work Week. The whole idea of that instantly appealed to me. I’m a person who loves to-do lists, and I’m huge on optimization and efficiency. So the job is really about bringing all those things to our customers at scale. It was really exciting for me. The 20-Minute Work Week is essentially where our customers want to go for quick hits; quick optimizations they can execute on in just a couple of minutes. And then you have the strategy piece where you’re looking for that next big, meaty thing to take your advertising to the next level. That’s the new project I’m spearheading.

Can you talk a little more about that Strategies feature?

Sure. When we say “Strategies” we’re talking about some of the more advanced things our customers can do—things that our customer success team consults them on now. They tend to be pretty complex, and often need to be done over the course of many different sittings. These are things like getting remarketing fired up or creating competitor campaigns or optimizing for mobile. At the moment, these kinds of strategies aren’t really accessible to people who aren’t super familiar with the native platforms. So what we’re trying to do is bring the things our customer success reps are preaching into the software. 

That’s really cool. What kind of work goes into that? Is there a timeline for completion?

So it’s not out yet. But the way it works is we have a huge amount of data about all of our different customers, and we’re going to use all that data to identify the top strategies that are right for each customer. So we might find that a particular strategy like RLSAs works well for SaaS (Software as a Service) customers. The software would then automatically recommend that strategy for the customer and prompt them through a nice multi-step flow, a flow that would be both understandable and also faster than manual implementation.

As far as a timeline goes, we’re hoping to come out with the first iteration of the feature in February 2019. There’s a lot of basic work that needs to be done to get the first strategy out the door, but then they should come more rapidly. Ultimately, we’re hoping to have 10+ strategies that span Google, Facebook, and Bing.  It’s incredibly challenging, because it involves taking the art that’s in our reps’ heads and getting it down on paper. For instance, how do you actually correctly set up a competitor campaign? And how can we bring that into the software? There are a lot of people here that are bigger marketing experts than I am, so it’s going to require a complete cross-functional effort to actually hash the whole thing out.

Has any other project here been particularly challenging?

Last year, I was working on improving the Add Negatives algorithm. That’s the most used 20-Minute Work Week alert. We are always trying to improve our algorithms so that the suggestions customers get are as relevant as possible. This one was really challenging for a few reasons. First, it’s extremely difficult to nail down a one-size-fits-all algorithm. For example, locations might be really good negatives for one customer, but they might not be great for another. And because a lot of our customers are small business owners, there’s not always an abundance of data to go off of.

So that project was very difficult. Right now, our engineering team is working on totally redoing the UI of that alert so that it uses the new algorithm, then also incorporates knowledge that only the customer knows.  We’ll walk them through a process that helps them decide: do we really want a negative, or do we actually want a new keyword? Or do we actually want a new ad group? Whereas before you could only accept or reject what was suggested, now you can really analyze your search queries to select the best option—even if it’s not what our algorithm came up with.

Very cool. Switching gears a bit—has any one thing you’ve learned here particularly stuck with you?

I think I’ve learned to have more empathy for other departments here. For example, I learned Python here when one of the engineers taught a class about it.  So, now I can read some of the code the engineers write, and I see just how much effort goes into my “easy” feature idea. I also have gotten the opportunity to shadow a bunch of Sales and Customer Success consulting calls, which helped me build empathy for all the work they do.

What’s your workspace aesthetic like? Minimalist? Homey? Neat?

It’s very neat. Like usually if the cleaning people move something just a little bit I can tell. Especially if they have the monitors out of the line…Everything has a place [laughs]! But yeah, I like to have some plants or some homey touches. I had this little eco ball, like a water sphere that had little shrimp in it. I killed them, though, so I don’t have anything right now. But in the future I hope to get them again.

You killed them accidentally or on purpose??

Accidentally! They were in the wrong sunshine when they died. It’s called an ecosphere, and it’s this entirely closed system that has like plants and shrimp. You can’t open it so it’s supposed to be self-sustaining…but obviously it was not.

You need to put your head down and get some work done asap. Do you have a go-to song?

 When I’m at work and I want to focus, I like quieter acoustic music. But it has to have words; I can’t do classical music that would make me even more tired. I listen to this one playlist on Spotify over and over. It’s called “Calm Down.” I don’t even know what you would call the genre, but it definitely helps me decompress.

If WordStream announced a last-minute day off for tomorrow, what would you do with your suddenly free day?

OK—so I play Pokemon Go. You remember that? From like 2017? Well, I still play it. I have played it every day since it came out. I’m really into that. My husband plays it, too. It’s a game that involves a lot of walking around to different places so if I had the whole day off, it would be great to just walk around and do that.

What are the best spots to catch Pokemon around the city?

Probably the best spot is Castle Island, but Castle Island and Boston Common are both really great. The first week the game came out there were just like hundreds of people at Castle Island, and there was a Blastoise. I took a video on my phone—I was running in a crowd of a thousand people trying to get this thing.

If you didn’t work in marketing, what would you do?

I’m very into board games so I think I would do that. Maybe I could be like a board game designer or a board game tester. Or I have this idea where I would open a board game café. I also have this idea where I could go into schools and teach board games. Because it really develops a lot of different skills—problem solving, cooperation, etc. Two of my favorite games are Eldritch Horror and 7 Wonders. I’ve joined various meetup groups over the years. I also play board games with a group of WordStream people that meets every other week.

Anything else you do in your spare time?  

I play volleyball, pretty poorly, in the Social Boston Sports leagues.

I also volunteer for the Crisis Text Line, which is basically a suicide crisis line but over text. I used to do it over the phone when I was in college, but I like it over text better. A lot of people in that kind of crisis feel more comfortable over text. It’s a lot of younger teenagers who don’t really know what other resources they have available.

How long have you been doing that?

For two years. It can be pretty intense. Sometimes I’ll take a break for a month or so. Especially over text, it can sometimes feel like you’re talking to the same person over and over again and they’re not getting better. But it definitely feels good when you can help someone. Like sometimes the texter will tell me it’s the first time they’ve told anyone about this. It’s rewarding to know you are helping in that way.

Read more: wordstream.com