Data Scientist: I was FIRED and STILL made $600K

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: how and why did you leave your job as a data scientist and i left that one because i was fired do you think like being a data analyst helped you to become a data scientist or made you a [00:00:11] Megan Lu: better data scientist and so now i definitely don't think that you have to be a data analyst [00:00:17] Speaker 1: before becoming a data scientist why exactly did you choose to quit because you were not making 600k when you decided to quit so like what exactly happened um but there is a much longer story i was losing hair losing sleep hi everyone welcome back to another video in today's video we're talking to megan lu who is an ex-data scientist and quit her job two years ago but she actually made 600k last year after quitting her job so today we're going to talk to her and learn her time as a data scientist why she actually quit and how the hell she made 600k working for herself megan thank you so much for being on my channel my first question for you a lot of people dream to be a data scientist and work as a data scientist so my question for you how and why did you leave your job [00:01:06] Megan Lu: as a data scientist great question um so actually the last corporate role that i had i was a developer advocate at a data science role the job i had before that was as a data scientist and i was laid off from that one and then i jumped over to another um very early stage small uh data science startup where i was a developer advocate and i left that one because long story short i was fired but there's a longer [00:01:35] Speaker 1: story behind that one so can i ask you like when you were working as a data scientist before developer [00:01:39] Megan Lu: advocate what type of work were you doing so i was working more as like a consultant to help um other startups who were our clients to set up their their data science stack or their infrastructure and again these were our clients were also early stage startups who had like no data tools in place it was probably like they had one and like they would usually have one analyst um just trying to crunch numbers and spreadsheets and so as a data scientist i was going in um and partnering with these clients analysts to help build up their um their data infrastructure so that they could so that their analysts could become more efficient at um like performing daily data tasks and cleaning and all of that awesome and did you go to school for data science like is that what you studied no i actually studied finance uh when i was in college and then um i did two years in finance uh at a big four consulting firm i absolutely hated it um and then i pivoted into uh the data world by becoming a data analyst first and then became a data scientist [00:02:46] Speaker 1: okay that's very interesting because a lot of people specifically my audience a lot of them are data analysts and um or data scientists and there is this conception that they think that they need to become a data analyst before they could become a data scientist do you think like being a data analyst helped you to become a data scientist or made you a better data scientist and if you were to do it all over again would you pick data scientist role if that's what you wanted to do from the start [00:03:11] Megan Lu: so the world that i was in when i first became a data analyst that was very much the path that people believed was the only way into data science um and so i believed that as well as okay i'm gonna become a data analyst first and then i'm gonna become a data scientist and that was four years ago and like things have changed so fast because of ai and so now i definitely don't think that you have to be a data analyst before becoming a data scientist um because there are just so many free resources out there that you can take and also with ai being your thought partner and and being um like your sidekick and doing data work and building up your portfolio that route has kind of collapsed where um being a data analyst [00:04:00] Speaker 1: i don't think is mandatory anymore yeah yeah this is my go-to advice for like people who are watching has been watching my channel it's like you don't need to become a data analyst to become a data scientist even before ai i like i truly believe that because data analyst does like a lot of specific skill set like dashboarding which yeah a data scientist doesn't really do so like i've always believed that if you already know that you're going to become a data scientist or a data engineer you don't need to become a data analyst but now with ai what you're saying is that that path has kind of like molded yeah or kind of like gone away like you don't need to do that i i think like that notion came from the [00:04:35] Megan Lu: fact that you know we were just talking about this how data science was considered the sexiest role of the 21st century so it was so much more competitive to become a data scientist first so um people were finding that data analyst roles were slightly easier and that was your way of getting your foot in the door but you know now the world has changed so much yes the world has changed a lot with ai but the way [00:05:00] Speaker 1: you grow your career has not it still comes down to visibility and scale yes getting your work seen is important but also having other people adopt your work is even more important and one of the best ways to do that is by sharing what you learn with other people and how they can actually use it for example let's say you have built a new methodology to understand customer churn so instead of just sharing the final metric you document how you did it how you pull the data the assumptions you made and how you calculated churn so someone else can follow your process that's where tools like scribe comes in who is also sponsoring this portion of the video let me show you a quick example how you can use scribe to scale your work i am building a sql quiz app using a vibe coding tool i hit record in scribe go through the workflow customize it and publish the site scribe automatically turns everything i did into a clear step-by-step workbook with screenshots and steps that i can share as a link or download as a pdf and with scribe's guide me feature people can follow the process interactively click by click right in their browsers i'm linking scribe in the description below now let's talk about why megan actually quit her job as a data scientist yeah okay so now shifting gears a little bit i want to go back to you leaving your job and like want to dive deeper into it i know there are like some spicy takes and tea there because i definitely want to get get into that so let me ask you like why exactly did you choose to quit because you were not making 600k when you decided to quit so like [00:06:35] Megan Lu: what exactly happened yeah i wow it's been a while since i've told this story i feel like when it first happened and it was like so fresh i was telling everybody who would listen but it's been a while since i've like unpacked the trauma that came with that that role um the i said the the short story of it was that i was fired um but there is a much longer story um that maybe some of my followers know i i actually was uh fired based on the i guess like the generic definition of it um i was very burnt out in that role because and i was only six months into that role this is developer advocate yeah as a data scientist yeah yeah data scientist i was i was laid off and then went to the next data science startup where i was a developer advocate um and i was really burnt out in that role um because i was trying to balance content creation with showing up in this role where if you guys don't know what developer advocates do you um are basically doing content creation for the company but it's like technical content creation and so i was like trying to juggle doing content for myself versus doing content for a company that i was like i don't even know if i really believe in the mission of this company so it's like as you know like when you create content you have to like really believe it to show up authentically and because people can sense it totally and i was just like why am i doing this and so that resulted in me feeling this resentment towards this role that it felt like it was taking away time from me being able to create content for myself yeah and i was starting to get noticed by brands and starting to make some money off of my content at the time and so i was like why am i wasting my time and energy on somebody else's dream and that resulted in not just resentment but also burnout yeah um and i was put on a pip um by my manager who was also the ceo of the company um and he the whole time was like but megan like we love you here we want you to work through this pip like this pip is good for you but why put you on it for the first place you know what in risk in retrospect i can see why he put me on on the pip because i just i was not passionate about the doing this job and so my performance was definitely suffering okay but i'm like i like i don't need to be here so like i'm just not gonna take this pip and to a manager like him he was he was very much like what do you mean you're not gonna take the pip like he just assumed that i wanted to work through it and i was like i don't want to work through this so i'm gonna go and he was like well not if we fire you first and so um the the week after i was let go i had a co-worker who was still working there who showed me screenshots of the slack messages that he sent to the company about me and it was very much framed like you know like megan is gone for performance reasons only like we fired her blah blah blah and i'm like i did not want to be here yeah and uh it so it was it was a lot of i guess like he said she said um but at the end of the day i think it was much better that i am working for myself now and not for somebody whose dream i [00:09:55] Speaker 1: don't really believe in you know yeah yeah if you were to like go back in time would you have done [00:10:01] Megan Lu: something differently hmm yeah i so after i was laid off from that data science job i was so desperate to find another role quickly because i had never been jobless before it was my first time like leaving a job not out of my own accord and i was really proud of being a data scientist as well yeah so when i lost that job i lost my identity and i was like i need to be employed to fill this void in my soul i totally hear you and so like i i found the next job that i got at the um as a developer advocate three weeks later yeah um because i was just like i need a job right now which i think for most people like to be able to say oh i i was able to land a job like three weeks after it's badass that's a good thing but i think in retrospect i really rushed into it and didn't suss out the opportunity to see if there were if it was actually going to be a cultural fit um because i was just so desperate to not be jobless yeah and so i just accepted it and also like they gave me a pretty good package and so i was like hell yeah like i'm gonna take this but i think i ended up cutting corners in that job search process [00:11:15] Speaker 1: because of it yeah no you touched on something about identity and that's something that i'm currently dealing with now because like i quit my job at google like about three weeks ago and last week i actually went to a concert and i this lady was sitting right next to me and she was like what do you do first answer like out of my mouth without even thinking because like there's loud music playing and everything i'm a data scientist no it was yeah i was like i was at google like that was my response like i'm doing so much more and but my response my initial instinct was like i was at google so like when you said that like i'm totally like relating to that because we do tend to make our work our identities yeah and like how can you not especially if you spend like 40 hours a week at a job or like [00:11:57] Megan Lu: multiple years but i also think that it's it's the default to define yourself by these titles that are given you by society so it comes so easily out of your mouth like this is what i am this is the box that i'm in and then when you get plunged into this world of a lot of uh like what we do now as content creators like it's not just one thing right like we could be doing so many different things so it's so much harder to is what we're doing now in in three words yeah compared to when you worked at google [00:12:29] Speaker 1: those three words were just i work at google and people know what google is exactly so it's easy [00:12:34] Megan Lu: less explanation right and so i i still very much struggle yeah it's just it's just so much harder to talk about what you do outside of these corporately bestowed titles yeah um that it takes some untraining even now like being two years into doing this i yeah it's so hard yeah so if i ask you today [00:12:54] Speaker 1: like what do you do for a living what's your three word four word answer i think the easiest answer [00:12:59] Megan Lu: i give is always i'm a content creator but it took so much out of me it took me so much effort to learn with just being comfortable with that title because i think it comes with stigma yeah and then i depending on who you give that answer to you have to explain what that means some of you don't even know like yeah and so i'm just like oh i don't want to go into this with you i'm probably never going to talk to you ever again but i just nowadays i'm just like most days i'm like i'm a content creator period that's it yeah right and i if they want an elaboration i'll give it to them but otherwise i [00:13:33] Speaker 1: don't try to over explain myself yeah yeah i like that i need to practice more on that talking about practice maybe all of you who are watching um leave it in the comments what do you do for living and forget about your work it has to be something else if somebody asks you what do you do for a living what exactly are you going to say and let's say tomorrow you don't work at your employer yeah like [00:13:50] Megan Lu: don't leave don't have your title in it and don't mention your company you'll be like who are you who [00:13:57] Speaker 1: are you yeah yeah let us know in the existential question exactly okay the last thing i want to talk about is your burnout i think you briefly touched on it in the video earlier and something that i relate to a lot but for you that burnout was kind of severe so like what were some signs that you started noticing uh with your burnout especially with somebody people who are watching especially right now like i think a lot of people are burned out so like what were some signs that you started noticing and you realized that this is a burnout and you need to like really take a step back and do something [00:14:27] Megan Lu: about it for me it was that resentment feeling and i started noticing that i became i was becoming somebody that i was not and i was angry at everybody in my life for not like understanding exactly what i was going through when in reality like the people in my life had there's no reason for them to like know what i'm going through but i i felt like every inconvenience that was bestowed upon me i was like this is because of my job um and so when that resentment started seeping into areas of my life outside of my job um that was when i knew that it wasn't a good fit now that wasn't necessarily the thing that ended up making me actually leave but it was like the first sign yeah yeah and you also talked [00:15:14] Speaker 1: about when we were discussing you also talked about some physical signs so like what were those physical [00:15:18] Megan Lu: signs that yeah were related to the burnout i was losing hair losing sleep losing weight not in a good way losing my freaking sanity just like losing all around yeah um and i think those yeah those physical signs are the most obvious ones that actually don't show up early on but when they do show up that's when you [00:15:40] Speaker 1: know it's not good yeah yeah yeah for me i would say like it was like definitely sleep deprivation like i wasn't able to sleep more than four hours per night that's crazy but for me like the physical symptoms like my heart started racing even when i was like sleeping and when i talked to my doctor he was like your body is just catching up to it so that's why you're like starting oh yeah i like i had major [00:16:02] Megan Lu: insomnia and i was just like taking a lot of different not like crazy sleep concoctions but just like downing the melatonin gummies and i was just like is there a point where i should like stop taking melatonin because i need to be taking melatonin every day just to fall asleep yeah that was like it was so [00:16:20] Speaker 1: rough yeah um the sleep part yeah yeah well thank you for so being so open and raw and sharing your insights especially your like burnout story so i do want to end on a positive note and i do want to ask what you are up to how in the world are you making 600k what's your advice to people who like have aspirations to make that kind of money like first of all like congratulations you're doing [00:16:43] Megan Lu: awesome thank you so inspiring but how i think the society that we're in now is starting to become more open to this idea of portfolio careers of like having different assets in your portfolio that you call a career and investing in things out and if i've job and for me i wouldn't have uh reached this point if i didn't see potential in myself in those other parts of my portfolio which was like content creation but it doesn't have to be content creation i think these days content creation sounds very sexy but there's so many other like avenues that you can that you can monetize and just like being open to having passions outside of work is so important and i think i've always uh known that a nine to five job was not supposed to be my entire life like i've always had a lot of different interests outside of work um and it's just identifying who you are outside of your job so that exercise that you encourage people to be like okay who are you actually outside of your job title outside of your company like think deeply about it and then ask yourself okay like where can i provide what areas of my life [00:17:53] Speaker 1: can i provide value to other people yeah yeah i know that's very solid advice and i also want to share like if you work a nine to five i think it's completely fine like i would have worked the nine to five forever if i could but for me just the time was the essence and i had to like pick and choose uh working a nine to five is awesome it gives you stability health insurance especially if you live in the u.s it gives you a stable income yeah and gives you a structure in your day which both of us struggled with now like having a structure in our day and whatnot so it's not for everybody like nine to five yes it's great content creation is not for everybody startup everything it's not for everybody so like figure out what's best for you and just follow the lead and go from there couldn't have said it better myself all right all right megan where can everybody find you i am [00:18:36] Megan Lu: meg loves data on all of my socials uh on youtube instagram linkedin tick tock um yeah follow me there [00:18:44] Speaker 1: all right thank you so much for being on the channel and i hope you learned something new today let us know in comments what was your favorite part and i'll see you in the next video have a good one i even though it's recording one second oh my god girl yeah it's recording oh thank god yeah finish our thought uh so