Grace Hopper Celebration draws wide interest in data careers

Insight leads discussions on data science and engineering at the preeminent conference for women in computing

Current and former Insight staffers at the 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando. From left: Cassie Stover (Admissions Program Manager), Alyssa Fu Ward (former Insight Program Director now at Twitter), Kathy Copic (Vice President of Growth), Jeremy Karnowski (Artificial Intelligence Lead) and Hoa Nguyen (New York Data Engineering Head).

The Grace Hopper Celebration — the preeminent conference for women in computing held earlier this October in Orlando — primarily attracts software engineers and computer scientists. But data science and data engineering careers also drew high interest this year based on attendance at sessions where data careers and other topics were prominently featured.

Demystifying Data Careers: advice on gaining experience in the field

Close to 200 students, recent graduates and others gathered inside Icebar Orlando for the Demystifying Data Careers reception on the second night of the conference. Insight Data Science — an education start-up that offers free fellowship training programs in data science, data engineering, health data and artificial intelligence — hosted the reception.

Data scientists and other tech leaders from Apple, Intuit, Facebook, and Synopsis, joined Insight to outline how to gain experience in the field and what it takes to succeed in data.

“Follow your own curiosity,” said Kathy Copic, vice president for growth at Insight. “Not just building (data tools) but figuring out what to build is a skill.”

Copic advised the many students in the room to connect and talk to people in the field because it will help them understand industry terminology. Working on projects also will help build evidence of data skills that employers will find attractive. Insight’s seven-week fellowship programs provides such opportunities to work on industry projects in a collaborative environment.

Ying Cui, a senior data scientist who does modeling and algorithm design for Apple, said data scientists must have curiosity, tenacity, problem solving and computational skills. They also must know how to obtain and, just as importantly, clean data.

“Please clean your data as much as possible,” Cui said, repeating the adage, “garbage in, garbage out.”

While there’s a lot of interest in data science, data engineering is equally crucial, said Nhung Ho, an Insight alumna and data science manager at Intuit. At Intuit, the data pipeline must regularly process 10 billion events at a time.

“Data engineers really help you scale out your pipeline,” she said.

Data Careers Decoded: what’s the difference between product managers, data scientists, and data engineers?

Another Grace Hopper event that prominently featured data was the earlier Data Careers Decoded panel discussion, which was moderated by Kathy Copic of Insight and drew over 155 people on Wednesday.

The panel featured Maria Kazandjieva, an engineering manager at Netflix; Frances Haugen, product manager at Pinterest; Akansha Sidhwani, product marketing manager at Salesforce; and Lisa Qian, data science manager at Airbnb.

From left: Frances Haugen (Product Manager at Pinterest), Kathy Copic (VP of Growth at Insight), Maria Kazandjieva (Engineering Manager at Netflix), Lisa Qian (Data Science Manager at Airbnb), Akansha Sidhwani (Product Marketing Manager at Salesforce).

Attendees came from industry jobs or academia, all seeking advice on how to get into data science roles and wanting to learn the differences between a product manager, product marketing manager, data scientist and data engineer.

“Engineering is more execution-oriented,” Haugen said. “Product managers have to make decisions…you get to set the voice of the product.”

With responsibility comes the satisfaction of seeing a project to fruition, she said.

“It can be really satisfying to have a dream, and then have the dream become reality,” Haugen said.

Product managers also must enjoy attending meetings and being tapped into people’s feelings.

“You have to be bought into that everyone’s feelings matter,” Haugen said to laughter.

Product marketing managers, on the other hand, are primarily responsible for writing blogs and customer-facing materials.

“You’re creating the magic and storytelling around that product,” Sidhwani said.

In order to be successful at analyzing data, analysts must bring a certain amount of rigor and skepticism to their work, Kazandjieva said.

“People who are not sufficiently skeptical tend to have a harder time at data analytics,” she said. “Do not forget about common sense.”

Data engineering also plays a key role in the analysis of data, Kazandjieva said.

“The person you are most grateful for is the data engineer,” she said. “Our world is built on data engineering.”

While attendees asked about the technologies being used most in the industry, Copic cautioned them to not be wed to one because tools are always changing and may vary from one region of the country to another.

More roles are involved in analyzing data. Companies, such as Airbnb promote a culture of “data democratization,” which has rightfully empowered many more people to analyze data for their own purposes.

While the job of querying data has in the past fallen strictly under the purview of data scientists, everyone is now given access to the data and trained on how to answers to common questions, such as how many properties are available in New York, Qian said.

“You don’t need a PhD to answer queries like that,” she said.

The future of women in data

The Grace Hopper Celebration sells out in minutes every year. Once again, there were a record number of attendees and submissions, and it is easy to see why — there were more interesting sessions than we could get our hands on.

Today’s young women in computer science, software engineering, data science and data engineering have more opportunities than ever to break into the field and to find role models in other technically savvy women. At Insight, we are proud to be a part of that, and are as driven as ever to continue helping women excel in these rapidly growing technical fields.

Taking the parting words from Telle Whitney, the outgoing President and Co-founder of AnitaB.org during the last keynote of the conference she helped originate: “Here is to the future.”