Key skills to focus - in 2020

Around two years back, I had written Key skills to focus - in 2018 and as I was revisiting skill recommendations for 2020, found that not much has changed, but the focus has become sharper.

 Here are the 4 skills that I had written about in 2018

1. Business Knowledge
2. Programming Skills
3. Cloud
4. Mathematics & Statistics

 Going into 2020, these are still relevant, however the flavors have evolved

 Business Knowledge

 Year after year, as I speak to hundreds of professionals, one skill which I find lacking is “Business Knowledge”.

 The whole IT business is there for one purpose, to enable businesses to succeed, and generation after generation of IT engineers focus on technology but not business. One of my favorite short stories is –

 Two men were laying bricks. A passer-by asked the first one: “What are you doing?” He said he was laying bricks. Then he asked the second one. That man said: “I am building a temple.”.

 If we don’t have the business knowledge and don’t attempt to understand the big picture we would be like the first person and sooner or later we will become obsolete.

 Learn about the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are governing your customer’s business and that will be the starting point of your journey to build “Business Knowledge”

 “Tell me something about the KPIs that you have worked on or supported”

--is one of my favorite interview questions. Unfortunately, there are very few people who are able to talk about KPIs irrespective of years of experience ? - Needless to say, many senior people don’t get selected because they don’t have “Business Knowledge”

 In my opinion it is important for all of us know at least some of these KPIs, especially the ones related to the domains/projects that we are associated with.

Programming Skills

If there are two programming skills that I would recommend, they are Python and SQL.

The entire data science fraternity is moving from R to Python. Spark community is moving from Scala to Python.

As per IEEE Python continues to be one of the best programming languages every developer should learn this year

As Data warehouses are moving to cloud, SQL is becoming more powerful. I have had colleagues talking about how SQL is important while working with Redshift, Snowflake or Big Query. As I read the Azure Synapse documentation, I am finding that SQL is becoming more powerful with the ability to work on unstructured and semi-structured data at scale.

For those who think SQL is just about Select Statement with joins, request you to do some serious reading on the possibilities in SQL beyond reading data from two tables (sources) and joining them.

Cloud

In my previous blog on 2020 - The year of Industry Certifications, if you watch closely all the certifications that I had written about for data enthusiasts are on cloud, including Databricks (that doesn’t have a on-premise offering).

So Cloud is the new normal, the new OS and the new workplace. So it is imperative that all of us become cloud literate. As I had mentioned in that blog there are a lot of cloud services for AI and that is going to become the new norm.

Mathematics & Statistics

For anyone who is serious about becoming a Data Scientist, please focus on Mathematics and Statistics. I was talking to a Senior Data Scientist in my team who has implemented neural networks for a CPG customer, who mentioned that it was important that one has a deep understanding of basic mathematics and how Logistic Regression works to be able to understand how deep neural networks work.

So if you are serious about becoming a Data Scientist, invest in some good education on the basics. Also please read my thoughts about 4 types of Data Scientists to plan accordingly.

To summarize it is the same 4 skills which I had written about in 2018, that are relevant for 2020 as well, but with sharpened focus.

Time to Sharpen our skills !

Curious to know what you think ??