SDS 368: Future-Proof Your Career

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, everybody. Super pumped to have you back here on the show. I’ve been reading this amazing book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. I’ve been meaning to read it for a long time now. I think I’ve downloaded on my Kindle before, but I never got to it. Now I’ve actually sat down and started reading it. I’m on page 25 now, so I can officially say I’ve started. And this is an amazing book. So it’s about working deeply, about not being distracted, about focusing for at least three to four hours a day and getting outstanding results because of that deep work. That’s what Cal refers to as deep work, when you focus on one task at a time for hours. Deep work is becoming increasingly rare because of all the distractions, social media, email, and so on. And is becoming increasingly valuable because that’s what produces results. 

But I’ll record probably a FiveMinuteFriday about this book later on once I’m finished with it. What I wanted to say here is about future-proofing your career. So there’s a little reference that Cal does to another book called Race Against the Machine from 2011, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. It’s not the same McAfee as antivirus McAfee. I don’t believe so. I think it’s a different McAfee. And it’s an older book, but there they mention that we are I think in this notion that we’re in the early stages of a great restructuring. And what they’re saying, there’s an, our technologies are racing ahead, but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind. What they say this will lead to is rather than a driving down of jobs, of all jobs, they say there’ll be a dividing of jobs. So not all jobs are going to become obsolete because of technology. There’ll be a division of jobs. 

And some skills, while some skills will be automatable and will be automated, other skills will actually thrive in this new technological progress. And so we’ll just discuss these skills. They identify the three main skills that will thrive. And I think it’s really cool to use at least one or two in your career and consciously think about them to really future-proof your career. And bear in mind that that book was written, so this Deep Work was written in 2016. It’s quite new, but that other one, The Race Against the Machine was written in 2011. So the things we’re talking about here, they already saw in 2011, it’s been nine years. So we are already quite far into this great restructuring as they call it. 

So here we go. What are the skills that will actually thrive in this new world that we’re entering into? So the first one is high skilled workers. And here they give the example Nate Silver, who is the author of I believe the website, FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight is where they do a lot of cool political predictions, sports predictions, and so on. And Nate Silver started that whole thing. He’s a statistician, really uses a lot of data science models and so on. Check it out if you haven’t yet. And they give an example, Nate Silver. And basically they’re saying that skills like data visualization, analytics, high-speed communications, rapid prototype and data-driven reasoning. All of these skills are going to be more and more valuable because machines are indeed going to be taking more and more work off human’s hands. But somebody has to create those models for the machines. Somebody has to analyze the data and that’s where data science and analytics, visualization will come in. 

And if you think about it, back in the 19th century or late 20th century, it was really hard to do any kind of data science, analytics and data. Things were happening. Automation was slowly picking up, but at the same time, because we didn’t have the tools that we have now for data science, it wasn’t the case. But now because machines are picking up even more, the more machines progress, the more we can do data science and analytics. So that is identified as one of the high skills that have high potential to thrive in this coming world and so good news. If you’re listening to this podcast, most likely you’re in the right space or you’re looking to get into the right space. 

Now, an interesting skill is skill number two, the superstars. So becoming a superstar at what you do, not just being average or just good enough or great, but becoming a real superstar at what you do is going to be a prerequisite for your career to thrive. 

What does that mean? Well, the more technology takes over the world, the more interconnected the world becomes. And that means that companies are going to have more and more access to a global talent pool. Rather than locally hiring people locally, more and more people are going to be working remotely and fulfilling their work there. And we’re already seeing this with this unfortunate coronavirus. People are forced to stay indoors and companies don’t have a choice. It’s not a luxury or an option to have your team work remotely. For many companies it’s now a must. Your team has to work remotely or your company goes bankrupt. And so we were forced as a society, as a human race even, to jump into this new world very fast. But as you can see, a lot of people are adapting. A lot of people are able to work and maybe you are working yourself remotely. 

Our team, SuperDataScience has been remote for many years since we started actually for the past four or five years. Right now we have 15 people on board. We cover 12 countries, eight time zones, five continents, and we are working happily together, produce outstanding results. By the way, I’m going to do a small plug here. If you’re interested in careers, check out SuperDataScience.com/careers. We are hiring right now. 

But anyway, back to the topic. So that is going to keep progressing. More and more people are going to be able to work online. More and more companies are going to be open to hiring people online. That means access to a global talent pool. Imagine if you’re an organization, are you going to hire the local data scientist who can come into your office, but he’s about eight, he or she, they’re about 80% or 90% they fit your requirements? Or you’re going to go out and look for a data science and most likely find one who is 99.9% exactly what or who you need in this role but they’re just in a different location? Of course, you’re going to go for the second option if the world becomes more technologically advanced and interconnected and this becomes a norm. 

So in order to thrive in that economy, you have to be really outstanding. And the other thing that this means is that we’re going to move more into a freelance type of economy where you don’t have to have a full time job and work all the time for the same company. You can just be a superstar, charge a very high rate, $100, $200, $300, $500 per hour, sit at home or wherever you want in your own office, in your coworking space and do five hours a week for one company, 10 hours a week for another company, 15 hours a week for another company and so on. It’s kind of, Naval Ravikant talks about this in a cool way in his podcast on the Joe Rogan Show where he says that we’re going to move to an economy of Uber, right? Where, as an Uber driver, you can accept a job, go and do it and then drop the person off and then switch your phone off and go rest if you want. 

Well, same thing here. We’re going to be able to think and decide what we want to actually fulfill, what jobs, what interests us and do those jobs. But again, that will be mostly like the priority will go to superstars. So you really got to be good at what you do. And the good news is, right, we’re already in the right space with data science, but now you just have to become really good at what you do. And at the same time, be open and skilled at this remote work new era, at this new working remotely concept. So you’ve got to get really good at that in order to open yourself up to these companies that are going to be accessing a global talent pool. And again, embracing technology is the answer here. 

And the third group of skills that identifies, they’re not actually a skill. It’s the owners. These are people who have the capital to invest into companies because during this great restructuring period, machines are going to be able to… the way I understand it is the machines are going to be able to provide a lot of leverage. For instance, in a company like Instagram, which was sold for a billion dollars to Facebook, they only had 13 people working there when it was sold for a billion dollars. So even with 13 people, you can build a billion dollar company. Yeah. So that’s technology provides a lot of leverage. So if you have capital, that’s another thing that you could look into as a way of future-proofing your career. 

So in a summary, he’s got a really cool summary here. The careers that will be… well, here’s a quote, “In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage. Those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines,” aka data scientists. That’s my add-on. “Those who are best at what they do and those with access to capital.” So as long as you fall into at least one of these groups, that’s amazing. And you probably already do. Try to fold this into two of these groups and really future-proof your career. Something to think about of what the world is going to be looking like in the future. So there we go. That’s how to future-proof your career. I found this very insightful. I hope you did, too. And I look forward to seeing back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.