This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with Daliana Liu, a data scientist and career coach. Business Insider has verified Liu’s employment with documents. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
After finishing my undergraduate math degree at a college in China, I moved to California to get my Master’s in Statistics at the University of California, Irvine.
In January 2014, I started working at a startup, before being recruited by Amazon a little over a year later as a business intelligence engineer.
I started at Amazon in Seattle, working on an A/B testing platform for their retail website. I created various statistical analyses and reports and supported product managers.
I trained employees on how to use A/B testing to make better product decisions, eventually starting my own newsletter for Amazon employees to share experiment insights from across teams.
An internal Amazon newsletter was my first content creation
The newsletter was my initial content creation. I learned to create engaging titles and make my writing concise and interesting.
During that time, I began writing on Medium about technical data science. Once, I wrote a viral post about saving money by picking the right month to start renting an apartment. It was exciting to help people make better decisions using data.
I started posting to LinkedIn in 2019. I wanted to share the unfiltered truth about being a data scientist and getting a job at Amazon, after seeing misleading posts about the industry. A couple of my posts blew up, but the majority of my following was organic from posting regularly. I now have nearly 300,000 followers on LinkedIn.
I then started a public newsletter. I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and thought having public channels would help me find investors in the future.
I moved up the ranks at Amazon and started a podcast
In December 2020, I moved to San Francisco to work for Amazon Web Services as a machine learning engineer. I got promoted to senior data scientist in 2021 and had to work with a lot of external customers.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
I read books about communication and influencing stakeholders. I wanted learn good communication for my own leadership within the company, as well as our clients.
In 2021, I launched a podcast interviewing data scientists on their day-to-day work, how they tackle technical problems, and their career journeys.
One of the guests I interviewed invited me to a dinner with his CEO, who offered me a job to work as a data scientist for his startup, Predibase. I quit Amazon in June 2022 to work at the startup.
During the year I worked at Predibase, I continued to experiment with my podcast while also creating a career course for data scientists, teaching them essential communication and influencing skills.
Between 2021 and 2023, when I posted weekly episodes, my podcast had 50,000 subscribers across platforms. My startup job supported me in pursuing a side business, and I started making income from sponsorship and events through the podcast. I started getting sponsorship in March 2023.
I quit Big Tech to start my own business
As much as I loved working in tech, I always wanted to do something of my own. Once I got to the point I had business contracts in place for my podcast, a plan for my course, and some savings, I decided to quit my job and start my own business in September 2023.
Around the time I quit the startup, a VC firm tried to recruit me for a platform community growth role because they like my content and the podcast I built. I didn’t take the job because I wanted to focus on my own business.
I now have a career accelerator course teaching data scientists communication skills, how to get promoted, and how to build their brands.
Being a thought leader opens job opportunties
While working for Amazon and the startup, I had recruiters from top companies like Apple and Netflix getting in touch. Even after leaving Big Tech, I still get messages from people at companies like OpenAI and Meta trying to recruit me.
They mention they like my experience in data science which they can see from my LinkedIn. They can also see my Medium blog and my podcast. I was able to get jobs through my podcast and recruiters often reference my content creation when they’ve reached out.
It’s very important in this job market to be a builder, and a great way to demonstrate that is to publish blog posts or create a demo for recruiters to stand out.
I think Big Tech companies value my technical skills and industry thought leadership, which I post about on blogs and LinkedIn. Having a large following makes it easier for these recruiters to find and trust me.
Startups and VC funds seem to value both my technical skills and content creation skills, also that I’ve built a community.
By publishing my thoughts, I’ve opened myself up to data science roles, as well as developed transferable skills. If my path as a thought leader doesn’t work out, I think it would be easy for me to find a job in data science, marketing, or a community role.
I’m not tempted to return to tech or startups. There’s uncertainty as an entrepreneur, but I get to choose my clients and projects. I can take time off and travel. I’m not married or a parent yet, but when that time comes, I want the freedom to be fully present.
