#8 Cat Zhou (Head of Data @ Twitter & BeReal): Data Science 101, Startups vs. Big Tech, and How to Break into Data

This episode is a live recording from a virtual Hacker House event on November 21st, 2024, in the Codédex community. 🏡 We invited our good friend and neighbor, Catherine Zhou, aka Cat, ex-Head of Data at Twitter and BeReal during these companies most pivotal years, to discuss her colorful career journey from working minimum wage at a gym and as a bike mechanic, all the way to JetBlue, Twitter, and BeReal. Cat shares her unique insights on the difference between working at a startup vs. big tech, what data looks like at a consumer platform with 25-250 million daily active users, the current job market, emergence of AI in Data Science, the importance of learning SQL to pass data interviews, and advice for all code newbies trying to break into data in 2025. Towards the end of the episode, we also had questions from the community! If you are trying to get your foot into the door as a Data Analyst and Data Scientist, there are too many gold nuggets and you do not want to miss this. Want to see more Boba Talk? Follow us ⁠⁠⁠@boba_talk⁠⁠ on Twitter! If you like this episode, please leave a review! Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:17) Working at Twitter and BeReal (2:29) What is Data Science? (7:20) Data Analyst vs. Data Scientist vs. Data Engineer (13:18) Tech Startups vs. Big Tech (17:46) Measuring data at Codédex (19:16) <- Gut calls - data-informed - data-driven -> (23:31) Tools to learn in Data Science: SQL, Python, R (27:44) SQL in Coding Interviews at Facebook, Reddit, Netflix (30:16) Emergence of AI in Data Science (31:55) Valérie: What's a piece of advice for someone at the start of their journey? (34:50) Samppii: What are some memorable projects at BeReal & Twitter? (37:05) Mel the Texas Hammer: How canone intersect data science with web dev? (39:21) Jessi: What was a big challenge with handling data? (42:03) Ritu: How to break into tech in 2025 without a degree? (46:00) Coder: Any routines in your day before you got into the industry? (50:17) Ruth: What type of data projects should I have on my resume/portfolio? (57:00) Outro Episode links: 🤳 BeReal 🚕 511 New York 📺 "Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy" (Netflix documentary) 🧪 ⁠A/B Testing⁠ 💡 HiPPO: Highest Paid Person's Opinion 📘 "Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiements" (Book) 🤖 Microsoft GitHub Copilot 🛢️ Learn SQL 📈 Tableau 📒 Jupyter Notebook 🐦 Jack Dorsey's Senate Hearing Boba Talk: Host: Sonny Li Videographer: Asiqur Rahman Videographer: Eric Romere Producer: Jay Yow Happy coding!

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