Why I Quit My $150,000 Data Science Job

Key Takeaways

I've never wanted to climb the corporate ladder I never wanted to be some cxo or director at a big Corporation you were getting paid well you're doing data science and you were part of a great team why would you ever leave that my goal was just to start a business and to learn am I doing what I want to be doing am I spending my time on what I want to spend my time on you can create your ideal job you can create your ideal life hey everyone I'm Shaw and this video is going to be a little different from what I typically post last month I made a pretty significant life change I decided to leave my full-time data science role and to go all in on entrepreneurship and my business I don't really know how this video is going to turn out I don't have slides like I usually do I don't have a structure I just kind of have my story and the reasons why I made my decision here I'm gonna basically talk about the reasons why I decided to make the transition and hopefully people watching this contemplating a similar decision maybe my story and reasoning gives you some helpful perspective in either deciding to stay in your current role or maybe make a transition a little bit of context so I was working as a data scientist at Toyota Financial Services I was part of a big data science group and it was a fantastic experience because never before had I worked with so many data scientists and Technical people prior to starting at Toyota I was in grad school I was getting my physics PhD and there who I worked with was essentially my research Group which was about 12 people and we're all about at the same level you know we're all grad students trying to figure out all this stuff coming into Toyota where there are many layers of experience and backgrounds it was a very rich team to be a part of and you had so many different people that you could walk up and talk to and get a new perspective ask questions learn from and for me learning is very important to me that's a big reason why I make YouTube videos and write articles about data science and other things so other than just like the broader team the team I worked with was awesome I worked with people I admired which not a lot of people can say and I feel like I grew so much and learned so much from the smaller team that I was working on this is probably making it even more confusing like Shaw you were getting paid well you're doing data science and you were part of a great team why would you ever leave that role that situation and so let's get into that the main reason like super big picture that I decided to leave was working in that role did not align with my long-term goals I've never wanted to climb the corporate ladder I never wanted to be some cxo or some director at a big Corporation ever since early days of grad school my vision for myself has always been to start a business to build a team and I eventually realized it's very difficult to do that part-time people who start businesses it's not uncommon for them to be working 60 80 hours a week trying to make that thing work so now imagine trying to do that while working 40 hours a week in a company and then trying to start this business and build this business in that additional 10 or 20 hours you can work realistically in a week so if we were to just take a step back if your goal is to start a business which of the two strategies is better suited to achieve that goal strategy one working 40 hours a week at a company and working on the business 10 hours a week or option two working 40 hours a week on the business and then trying to get money through gigs and other means to support yourself 10 hours a week I just came to the realization that option two made a lot more sense for me so that's reason number one working in the role no longer made sense given my long-term goals and aspirations the second big reason why I left was the same essentially I was too comfortable like I said before learning and growth is very important to me I think of it like this growth is essential to life so just think of a tree what does a tree do a tree grows and if a tree stops growing what is it doing it's probably dying so the way I see it growth is essential to a meaningful life and the thing about growth is that it's uncomfortable the converse of that is if you're comfortable you're not growing you're not learning there's no stress from the environment that's telling you that hey you need to do something you need to learn something but don't get me wrong when I first started the role it was very uncomfortable there was a lot of new things I had never worked corporate before there were a lot of new Norms new people New Concepts new problems it was a lot of learning early on but what happened was as time went on it started to like asymptote to a level of comfort and I'm not saying that I figured everything out and saw evolved data science or solved corporate or anything like that there's still a ton I could learn about being a data scientist doing financial services but kind of taking that step back again the question I have to ask myself is do I want to be a data scientist doing financial services at a big Corporation is this a skill set that I care to get to that expert level ultimately the answer was no because again my goal wasn't to become the best data scientist ever my goal wasn't to become VP of data science or anything like that my goal was just to start a business and to learn looking at the two options on the table corporate data scientists versus entrepreneur which option better aligns with those goals of starting a business and learning and ultimately it was just option two because taking the leap and trying to figure it out with no guarantee of income seemed a lot more uncomfortable than trying to figure it out making six figures this is a really important point because because if humans are good at anything it's adapting to their environment if your environment is risk-free comfortable having more money than you need in your bank account you're going to adapt to that environment on the other hand if you are very uncomfortable and need to figure out how to generate income to pay your bills and basic necessities you're going to be a lot more motivated in the second scenario this is the lesson that I kind of learned observing my parents who came to the U.S from Iran with very little money and opportunity but they just figured it out and it's funny because I was talking to my mom a while back about how life was when we were growing up it's like how'd you do it my dad was working full-time she was working full-time she was going to school and she was raising two kids I'm like how did you do it and she said I don't know I don't know how I did it and I think that's a testament to what we're capable of doing when we have no other options when we're backed into a corner we unlock block a level of performance that we did not know we were capable of and the best way to bring that out is to put yourself in a situation where you have no other option but to make it work so the third big reason and I'll probably just cut it here is the timing seemed right at work there was a bit of a lull we were transitioning projects and so it was less dependencies on me and the work could be better distributed to other people so it felt like a good time to make the transition because I've worked on a lot of different teams in a lot of different situations and I've observed when someone abruptly leaves and people are left like holding a bag and like scrambling trying to figure it out I mean there's always going to be that to some extent there's never going to be a perfect transition but it felt like good time to make the transition without throwing anyone into a bad situation perhaps more importantly I saw an opportunity so a bit more background in grad school I started doing freelance data science work and that's when I first realized that I don't need to work in a full-time role to make income I'm able to go to upwork apply to jobs get gigs that way that was an important point for me because I knew that even if I didn't have a full-time job I can always make money by going to upwork and picking up gigs another thing I started doing in grad school was making YouTube videos and writing blogs doing that for about three years now and to my surprise I've actually seen some traction and grown a small audience on these platforms an opportunity that this unlocks is that I often get people reaching out to me that want to hire me to do data science Consulting work and so I was incrementally seeing the number of reach outs increasing near the end of my time at Toyota so I knew I could make money on upwork I was seeing more traction of inbound leads coming from my content and on top of that I was generating a little bit of Revenue as part of the the medium partners program and YouTube's partners program and so all these elements together you know the content and the freelance it kind of added up to okay I can survive with the income that I generate through content and freelance work but on top of that since my income at Toyota was way more than my expenses I was able to save a Year's worth of expenses so even if I don't make a single dollar for 12 months I'll still be able to survive all these elements I can always go to upwork I got inbound leads coming in I've got a Year's worth of expenses in savings these all contributed to making going all in on entrepreneurship now seem like the right decision and a good opportunity so I cut the reasons there even though there was more that went into the decision just to recap the three biggest reasons why I decided to make the transition to entrepreneurship was one it was more aligned with my long-term goals to do is seem like a much more effective way to grow and develop the skills that I actually care about and want to develop and three the timing and the opportunity just seemed right so I've been full-time entrepreneur for about a month now you might be wondering am I dead yet what's going on how are things going another big surprise to me is that things are going according to plan this was my sketch of a plan leave and then in that first three months make as much content as possible because through making content I get more inbound leads that's good because it's much better if a client reaches out to you than if you apply to a job on upwork as a freelancer just because well one it's kind of less work you don't have to sift through a bunch of job postings and apply to them and go through interviews and all that kind of stuff but typically when clients reach out to you they're typically a better fit with your skill set and mindset just because I think you can pick up a lot lot about someone through watching them talk in a video or reading an article that they write and the goal with that is by the end of Q3 so right now it's August 2023. the goal is to land one single client that came through inbound seems like that's actually going to happen earlier than that someone that I've been talking to wants to move forward and start working together so that's good that's the first three months and the plan for Q4 is okay try to keep up the content but start prioritizing the freelance work a bit more just so you can maintain Financial Security and all that kind of stuff but ultimately for me the goal isn't to just be a freelancer while freelancing is a business and can be rewarding because you have a lot of freedom on the types of projects you take on who you work with where you work how you work etc My ultimate goal is to build a product and grow a business around that product I think a big reason why that sounds so appealing to me is because it feels like a big Challenge and I want to see if I can do it on some level but also I'm a big believer in the value of a team I truly believe that a good team where everyone's working cohesively and moving in the same direction can accomplish anything I've been part of some amazing teams and it's something that is so satisfying and fulfilling I think that Taps into something very fundamental about being human we are incredibly social creatures so if I'm a solo freelancer I miss out on that team aspect but I feel like if I can build a product growing a business around that product will require a team because I obviously can't do everything and so that's a plan the rough timeline is try to get something within two years right now freelance is just to pay the bills I'm freelancing just so I can survive but the main goal is figure out the product figure out that thing that I can feel build a business around so one month then I definitely do not regret the decision maybe I'll feel differently later but right now things are good everything's going according to plan somehow and it really feels like I'm living my dream life we'll see if I feel the same way in 8 to 12 months where the number and the savings starts getting smaller and smaller but really I think the realization for me is that you don't need to be a millionaire to live your dream life you don't need to wait 20 years to live your dream life you can just Live Your Dream Life now maybe it's not a hundred percent of what you envision but even if it's like 20 I think that's worth pursuing because at every step you can just gain an inch and just slowly incrementally get to your ideal life all that to say that my dream life was a lot closer than I may have thought because it doesn't really take a lot for us to be happy once all the basic needs are met then the next obstacle is am I doing what I want to be doing am I spending my time on what I want to spend my time on while some are lucky enough to work in a job where all the work that they do is exactly what they want to work on and what they want to give their attention to and what they want to dedicate their life to I feel the majority of people do not fit nicely into any existing job that's why I feel entrepreneurship is such a natural thing because you can create your ideal job you can create your ideal life based on your goals and your values if it's really important for you to travel all the time you can build a business that allows you to travel all the time if you want to work very odd hours from like 6 p.m to midnight every single day then you can build a business that allows you to do that I truly believe that you can create a role that is a hundred percent aligned and 100 matches your unique skill skill set Ambitions values goals Etc and it's just a matter of going toward that I feel like there are a lot of people that are in a job maybe they don't like it or they just kind of like it but it's not their ideal role it's not their ideal life that they're living and they have this entrepreneurial mindset they want to start a business but there's so many different things that could be holding them back one of the big ones is just doubt and uncertainty and a motivation for me is okay I'm going to do this and I'm going to document the journey and hopefully people who are on the fence and in a similar situation they'll be like this isn't so crazy this random guy on YouTube did it why can't I do it and that is exactly right why can't you do it you can do it we can all do it anyone can be an entrepreneur anyone can be successful it's just a matter of going after it and putting in the work and being willing to be uncomfortable okay so I'll stop there that was a long rant got an hour of footage here we'll see what it gets edited down to but if you've made it to the end I hope you found some sort of value through this rant and monologue that I just went on do you have a similar story similar Journey I'd love to hear it please drop it in the comments section below and as always thank you so much for your time and thanks for watching