Don’t Start Your Data Science Journey Without These 5 Must-Do Steps — A Spotify Data Scientist’s Full Guide | by Khouloud El Alami | Sep, 2023

A complete guide to everything I wish I’d done before starting my Data Science journey, here’s to acing your first year in data

Are you just starting your journey in data science? Maybe you’ve been staring at this data science degree or boot camp for way too long. Now you don’t know where to start?

Maybe you’ve already started your data science journey, and now you’re overwhelmed and all over the place?

Four years ago, I was you — except I jumped blindly into a data science degree with zero coding skills. Spoiler: I struggled. A lot.

Fast-forward to today: I’m a Data Scientist at Spotify and I’m here to give you the heads-up I wish someone had given me 4 years ago. If you’re about to take the next step towards your dream degree, then this article could be a game-changer for you.

Trust me, you don’t want to dive into this unprepared. I thought getting into NYU meant I’d slide through the year. I mean I knew the climb would be bumpy but I wasn’t prepared for the freaking mountains I ended up facing.

Another spoiler: I survived. But it was a painful journey full of tears and binge eating. So I’m here to spare you from this.

In this article, I’ll unpack the 5 most crucial moves I wish I’d done before starting my data science degree at NYU. These are 5 steps that I actually ended up learning all at once during my degree.

This can be extremely overwhelming because learning all these skills at the same time is challenging → There is so much that needs to be processed in so little time.

Nobody should be sleepwalking toward such a challenging project without some solid prep talk.

This article is my letter to past-me — and to you.

Ready? Let’s get straight to it. You’ll thank me later!