Over the past three years, I have taken 3 large multi-month courses and a bunch of shorter courses. I spent more than 300 ₽ on them and did not achieve my goals. It seems that I have scored enough bumps to draw conclusions and do everything right in the last of the courses. Well, at the same time write a note about it.
Here is a list of coursesI note that they are all wonderful; the final results correspond to the efforts I put in):
- 2017 — annual offline course "Digital Product Design" at the HSE School of Design. The goal is to become a designer. The result - the last quarter was completely skipped, the diploma was not done. Zero interviews, zero offers.
- 2018 - studied for 7 months at the School of Gorbunov Bureau Leaders. The goal is to become a manager in the design team. As a result, I couldn’t find a team for the educational project (because I didn’t even try), as a result, I dropped out due to poor progress. One interview, zero offers.
- 2019 — Data Analyst course at Yandex.Practicum. The goal is to find a job as an analyst and “enter IT Co.” Subtotal three weeks before the end of the course - two personal projects on the topic, additional materials read and categorized. I made three approaches to the resume, sent a dozen and a half responses to vacancies, received 5 responses, passed two interviews. So far, too, zero offers.
I collected methods and principles that I thought of during the training. Broken into conditional categories: for all times, before training, during study and after (job search).
Metaskills - those that are useful in any case
Time planning and mode - when exactly to engage in training. "Time slots" - fixed periods of time for classes; for example, two hours in the morning before work. I have a daily routine and there is a so-called. "strong hours" - the time when my pot boils and I can do complex things.
Understanding the purpose of learning. If “just for yourself” - then this is at best a hobby, and at worst - one of the forms of procrastination. And if the task is to change the profession, then it is better to designate it in advance.
I often signed up for 5 courses on Coursera in a rush and then took zero of them. The next time I went to the site in six months, but only to sign up again for 10 courses.
Oleg Yuryev, my colleague at the Practicum course, adds: “You also need to have the strength to refuse to take a course that has become uninteresting to you, I spent dozens of hours on this matter, only because of my perfectionism, supposedly once you start, then you need to finish". Don't give drown you.
Start on Monday. It sounds trite, but postponing the weekly sprint task to Friday is a bad idea. Even starting on a Monday, I often managed to finish work just before the deadline. (See bureau principle “")
Google search. Questions like “how to change the color on the chart” or “what argument is responsible for this in the function”. Here, by the way, knowledge of English is useful - there are more answers and a higher chance to quickly find the right one.
Blind typing. Most of the time you will have to write something: if you do it at least 10% faster, you can have time to watch an extra series 😉 to work 10-15 minutes a day.
Keyboard shortcuts for working with text. Often you have to run the cursor over a sheet of text or code. Shortcuts help you select whole words or lines, move between words. on Lifehacker.
Take notes. The principle of the learning pyramid: read → wrote down → discussed → taught another. Without notes, it turned out like this: at the beginning of the material, “this is how the function is called, these are the parameters, here is the syntax”, then a lot of information. When it came to practice, I would open the code editor... and go re-read the theory.
Pre-training (six months to a year before the start)
English is a required skill. All advanced knowledge in English. Non-advanced ones are also in English, although some of them have been translated. And all the documentation for the programs is also in English. Not to mention cool lectures and podcasts.
The course Learning how to learn Barbara Oakley on Coursera or her own bookThink like a mathematician"(Eng. Mind for Numbers). Or at least . Helps to understand basic things about how the brain works when learning. Plus, they give good practical advice based on this data.
Financial pillow. 6 monthly salaries (more is better) in the account will be very useful when you have to gain the first experience in a new profession in junior positions for 50 thousand per month. ( about the pillow in Tinkoff-Journal or Podlodka podcast)
Recommendations for the course "Data Analyst" Yandex.Practicum
This is my last course, and so far the most successful in terms of my activity, so the impressions from it are the freshest.
Before the start of training
Pre-take basic courses - it will greatly help in the course of study to think about the task, and not about the tool.
- python- , ,
- SQL - ,
- Fundamentals of Statistics - .
If the goal of training is to change jobs, then a cheat code will help - reduce the load on the main job in order to devote more time to training. Not only for the training itself, but also for studying additional materials, watching lectures, doing personal projects according to your profile, going to meetups and interviews.
«… I would switch to part time at my current job to free up time for training and a pet project" - from Ivan Zamesin on how to get a new profession
During training
Read docs for libraries. Every time I sat down to write code, I needed to look at the documentation for something. Therefore, the main pages were bookmarked: Pandas (dataframes, series), datetime.
Do not copy code from theory. To the maximum, write all the functions by hand. This will help them remember and understand the syntax of the language. Then it will come in handy.
You can’t read all the docks - you can’t learn a language from a dictionary. To learn useful programming techniques, it helps to look at someone else's code. And it’s better to try to repeat it and look at the intermediate results in each line - so you can understand what is happening there and it’s better to remember.
Read additional literaturegiven at the end of each lesson. This helps to get a deeper understanding of the essence and will certainly come in handy in future topics (and interviews!). It helps a lot to repeat the code from the articles (if any), even if it seems that everything is simple there.
Do your projects. It helps to consolidate theoretical knowledge and deal with the material in real conditions - when there is no clear task and an example from theory that can be written off; You have to think through every step. It also shows the seriousness of intentions and works for the future of the portfolio.
When I took my first Python course, I came up with a project for myself and parsed Ilya Birman's blog: it helped me get used to the syntax of the language and understand how the BeautifulSoup library works and what you can do with dataframes in pandas. And when in the Workshop we then went through a visualization lesson, I was able to do .
Subscribe to profile blogs, companies, channels in Telegram and YouTube, podcasts. You can watch not only the latest materials, but also go through the archive in search of familiar words or just the most popular ones.
Choose a mode and stick to it.
Take breaks during the day This is where the Pomodoro technique helps. Do not be stupid on one task for three days - it is better to go for a walk, get some air and the solution will come by itself. If not, ask a colleague or mentor.
Take breaks during the week. The brain needs time to assimilate the received material, reboots help in this - completely disconnect for a day or two from the drunken absorption of new information. For example, on weekends. Training is a marathon, it is important to calculate the strength so as not to die at half the distance.
Sleep! Healthy and sufficient sleep is the foundation of a well-functioning brain.
Jim Collins analyzed the successes of outstanding people and deduced a simple principle - the "twenty-mile march":
The twenty-mile march involves reaching certain milestones in a certain amount of time—with the greatest perseverance and constancy, over a long period. Adhering to these principles is not easy for two reasons: it is difficult to fulfill voluntary commitments in difficult times, it is even more difficult to maintain one's pace when all circumstances favor accelerated progress..
Interactions with teachers, tutors and fellow students
When a question arose about the material covered, then pull the curators, mentors, dean's office. A teacher is the same tool for transferring knowledge as pages with theory or a simulator with code.
Usually, it is difficult to remember what was difficult during the course for a consultation, so I recommend writing down questions as soon as they arise. Well, in general, it is useful to go to consultations.
Submit the result for review faster, so you can have more iterations to improve it.
«Try to achieve some of your micro-goals in each project. For example, abandon loops, then use list comprehension, then methods chaining to feel your progress. If there is a desire to do more than is required in the project, you need to do it, but in a separate laptop, you can insert a link into the main work or send it to the mentor, find out what he thinks about this."- adds fellow student Oleg Yuryev
Work from simple to complex. To write a complex function or multi-step data processing, it is better to start with something simple and gradually increase in complexity.
The main thing is the people around: fellow students, curators, mentors, employees of the Practicum. If you are all in the same place together, there is a good chance that you have a similar path and common values. They also value education and strive to develop. And in six months they will be your colleagues in a new specialty. It is difficult for everyone to communicate (especially at the beginning), but overcoming this obstacle is worth it.
Work searches
If the goal of training is to change jobs, then you should start early. The process usually takes several months. To find a job by the end of the course, you need to start already in the middle. And if you already have some relevant experience, then you can start at the beginning.
View open vacancies to understand what the market needs: what kind of people they are looking for, what skill requirements, what stack of tools. And how much are they willing to pay?
To respond, to do tests and to pass interviews - after each next one, the worldview will change a little. It also helps to understand what material is missing in the training. For example, in many vacancies they ask SQL and test its knowledge on test tasks, and in the Practicum it was not given so much, unlike Python.
Write to people for advice (or just a thank you). Conference lecturers, blog and podcast writers, just the cool kids you follow.
Attend themed offline events to ask your questions live. Remember that lectures from events can also be watched on Youtube, and people come to the events themselves for communication and networking.
I would be glad for any feedback and especially advice on how to develop in a new profession as a novice analyst.
Thanks to Oleg Yuryev and Daria Grishko for their support, advice and their life experience.
Source: habr.com