career

Exploring the hackability of speed-based coding tests, using CodeSignal’s Industry Coding Framework as a case study.

Bing Chat recently quipped that humans are small language models. Here are some of my thoughts on how we small language models can remain relevant (for now).

Discussing my recent career move into climate tech as a way of doing more to help mitigate dangerous climate change.

My track record of posting here has been pretty poor in 2020, partly because of a bunch of content I’ve contributed elsewhere. In general, my guiding principle for posting is to only add stuff I’d want to read or cite, e.g., because I haven’t seen it discussed elsewhere. Well, no one has compiled a meta-post of my public work from 2020 (that I know of), so it’s finally time to publish it myself....

The passage of time makes wizards of us all. Today, any dullard can make bells ring across the ocean by tapping out phone numbers, cause inanimate toys to march by barking an order, or activate remote devices by touching a wireless screen. Thomas Edison couldn’t have managed any of this at his peak—and shortly before his time, such powers would have been considered the unique realm of God. Rob Reid After On Being a data scientist can sometimes feel like a race against software innovations....

Earlier this year, I gave a talk titled A Day in the Life of a Remote Data Scientist at the Data Science Sydney meetup. The talk covered similar ground to a post I published on remote data science work, with additional details on my daily schedule and projects, some gifs and Sydney jokes, heckling by the audience, and a Q&A session. I managed to watch it a few months ago without cringing too much, so it’s about time to post it here....

It’s been about a year and a half since I joined Automattic as a remote data scientist. This is the longest I’ve been in one position since finishing my PhD in 2012. This is also the first time I’ve worked full-time with a fully-distributed team. In this post, I briefly discuss some of the top pluses and minuses of remote work, based on my experience so far. + Flexible hours...

Aspiring data scientists and other visitors to this site often repeat the same questions. This post is the definitive collection of my answers to such questions (which may evolve over time). How do I become a data scientist? It depends on your situation. Before we get into it, have you thought about why you want to become a data scientist? Hmm… Not really. Why should I become a data scientist?...

About two years ago, I read the book The Year without Pants, which describes the author’s experience leading a team at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com, among other products). Automattic is a fully-distributed company, which means that all of its employees work remotely (hence pants are optional). While the book discusses some of the challenges of working remotely, the author’s general experience was very positive. A few months after reading the book, I decided to look for a full-time position after a period of independent work....