I Quit My Job as a Data Scientist

good morning I didn't sleep that well last night because I am quitting my job [Music] today [Music] I am so nervous right now oh my God my heart is beating out of my [Music] chest hey hey good morning how are you doing I'm good how are [Music] you cool well I think this is our Dev convo is there anything like work related that you'd like to talk about first or cool so um I have some news for you I'm putting in my two weeks uh I think I'm just going to take a break I don't really have anything lined up as of right now well I did a lot of thinking over the break um and I just felt like this would be a good move for me in the long term surprise to be honest I've been holding off on making this video because I just don't know what to say but I've decided to speak to you all as if I were speaking to my friends in real life and have this be a conversation from the heart versus something more scripted so let's start from the beginning as many of you all know I'm a a scientist at Spotify I've been here for 4 and 1/2 years almost 5 years and I started as an intern and then I converted to a full-time employee getting this position at this company has been a dream it was my dream job all throughout college and it felt so surreal to be in this privileged position where I get to say that I did the thing and for the first I would say 3 years it was an amazing exper experience probably the best corporate experience I could ever ask for I think for me where things started to shift was the past year year and a halfish I'm going to keep this portion short because there's a lot of nuances that just happen dayto day and I can remember all of them but I also don't want to and the purpose of this video is to not talk poorly about my experience there because the majority of my my experience at Spotify has been nothing short of amazing but obviously there are reasons as to why I decided to leave and to leave without a job lined up for the past year and some change I've been working on the highest priority project in my or as the sole data scientist for the majority of it and I was working like 10 to 14 hour days give and take for months on end and I'm sure there are folks out there who work more demanding jobs but that was just not the expectation that I had of my role and I do think the Tipping Point for me was just the constant pressure from certain stakeholders like I said this wasn't just for a week or two it was for months and at a certain point I started to develop insomnia this entire situation at work made me so anxious that I couldn't sleep I didn't exercise I didn't really do anything except for work and a big side effect from a demanding 9 to5 is you getting pulled away from your real life so at one point I had to like stop creating videos and this is the primary way where I kind of release my stress something that I love to do and this was taken away from me in September I posted one video in October I posted two videos and then I had this one video that I pushed out with a really cryptic like title because I was just kind of really fed up but I couldn't really tell you all explicitly what was happening so I kind of just vented all of my anger and put it into this one video and then when I did push myself to post videos I realized that I just didn't have time to do anything else in my life which is not really healthy I was really burnt out at that time and I failed to recognize it I think it took my therapists to tell me that it took my manager to kind of say it sounds like you're burnt out and I'm like oh really and then I think the final push was like these constant breakdowns for no reason where I'd just be like crying cuz I'm so stressed another Factor was that the economy is really bad so there wasn't a lot of upward Mobility or movement I think I had to really make an extremely strong case and even on top of working these ins saying hours even on top of working on a very high impact high visibility project I think my career progression wasn't very clear here it was extremely stagnant I felt like I was putting in so much work and I wasn't really moving anywhere those were just all signals for me to take a step back and say hey Julia like maybe you should re-evaluate your current situation and seek other opportunities so I decided to start job searching around October the market was pretty bad back then but I think it's kind of forced right now so I just shot my shot I got around like five HR calls three of them amounted to a role that I was interested in and they were also Al equally interested in me and then it took a month and a half for me to get to final rounds with one of the companies and at the end of the day they called me and said that I was a great candidate only positive reviews but they decided to go with someone more senior with more years of experience I was just so out of love with the thing that I was doing I just wanted to escape with the first opportunity that I got so I was really really upset like I remember calling my sister on the phone and just balling my eyes out so that was the end of November and then the week after we got the layoff announcements have another Vlog for that that was a really really tough week because the same week my grandpa passed so I was like okay I'm going away for a month this is not ideal I wish I had a job lined up and I can just quit and take this vacation relaxed and happy but that's not the case so I'm just going to go on vacation kind of think through things and come back with a game plan this past trip to China was just so eye openening to me because obviously I experience the pain of losing someone that's very very close to me for the first time in my life but also when I attended my Grandpa's funeral I was able to meet a lot of different people from different walks of his life and I got to learn so much about his life not only through the Beautiful Eulogy that my dad gave but also they were talking to his friends and every single person kind of met him at a different stage and they were like your grandpa was doing this when I met him your grandpa was like this when I met him and I think it helped me realize that although I feel like life is short because life has been moving by so fast life is actually really long and your career is also really long warranted that not everyone's going to live until they're ' 89 but you know when you live in New York City where everyone is just hustling all the time you're stuck in this bubble where one you're always comparing yourself to other people and two you're comparing yourself to yourself and just racing against time but for what right like why so it truly is like removing yourself from your environment gives you this Clarity that you probably didn't have before I think the hardest thing for me is letting go of my identity I am Julia I'm a data scientist working at Spotify and I'm a YouTuber and I live in New York City and on the internet my life looks so perfect like it's so difficult for me to lose all of that you know and obviously I've grown my subscriber base on YouTube due to the fact that I work as a data scientist at one of the top tech companies out there and it's really hard to let that go but through the funeral experience I've realized that my grandpa lived so many different different identities throughout his life I did a lot of thinking during my time abroad and I just decided that when I come back to the States I'm going to put in my 2 weeks and I'm just going to take a risk for myself I've worked really hard to get to where I am today to get this position at this company that I could have only ever dreamed of and at the same time I want to acknowledge how privileged I am privileged to get the experience to work at such a big tech company to have it on my resume to have a couple years of experience under my belt privileged to have a savings account for a rainy day privileged to have this platform that could be used to serve as financial support when I need it not everyone can just quit their job without another job lined up because they're chasing fulfillment and happiness because fulfillment is a privilege and happiness unfortunately is also a privilege so yeah that's basically it obviously this is not ideal ideally I would have a job lined up before quitting my current job but that's just not the case I feel like I've put my best foot forward at work to try to salvage things I feel like I tried my best job search SE ing while working a demanding job and that just didn't really work out for me so this is definitely my last option trust me I've thought through this so much but I am making this decision for myself for my mental health and I'm really really anxious and scared but I'm also really excited so you might be thinking what's next what's next is I'm sitting my ass down every day for a couple hours and turning out those leak code questions I'm definitely going to start job interviewing as soon as I can I'm going to take my time with the job search even if I wanted to frontload job interviewing and all of those things I don't think I can because the market is just really bad so um I'm going to take my time with you know the job search I'm going to give myself some Grace and I'm going to enjoy this period of unemployment but I'm also going to work really hard to get that next opportunity for myself Technic I don't think that's true I'm not an employed I think I'm going to be a full-time content creator until I find my next opportunity I'm going to job search and then I'm going to pump out content I'll probably try to post more on all of my different social media channels so subscribe follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok please and if you have any sponsorship leads definitely send them my way I know a lot of y'all subbed to me because I work in Tech so I'm excited to share with you all like my job searching process probably in Vlog form still in the upcoming weeks to months so stay tuned for that yeah this is definitely an end of an error and I hope that you all can stay and support me throughout this time once again I'm really really grateful for you and your support cannot say this enough thank you so much for watching and I will catch you in the next one bye

Channel: julia fei

Views: 592,312

Keywords: data science, data scientist, tech jobs, women in tech, big tech, a day in life, tech lifestyle, realistic day in life, a day in life of a data scientist, work week in my life, work week in my life vlog, a day in the life, working in tech vlog, working in tech in nyc, women in technology, day in my life vlog, work week in my life as a data scientist, work vlog, tech company, a week in my life, tech vlog, spotify vlog, spotify, working at spotify, nyc vlog, julia fei

Id: OMI4Wu9wnY0

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024