Work Musings...

  Photos from Unsplash.com: Srikanth D (Indian flag)  and Danny Gallegos (USA flag) Friday, June 25th 2021 @ 10.26am... I took the oath of allegiance to become a naturalized citizen of the US. It is the culmination of a 21-year process of my move from India to the US: being an international grad student applicant to Virginia Tech to a non-immigrant (Student, Temporary work visa) to an immigrant (Permanent Resident/Green Card Holder) to a US citizen. The biggest time was spent in going from work visa to Permanent resident with the long wait times for an Indian citizen. It is the end of a lot of waiting, a lot of checking the status of various applications on the USCIS site, and a LOT of documents including a notarized statement from my mom attesting to my birth! The two overwhelming emotions I felt after the oath ceremony, getting my certificate of naturalization, and walking out of the office were Acceptance and Relief.  Acceptance: It felt really good to be welcomed and...

It's a blog after a 1.5-year gap...  Recently, I had the chance to attend a webinar/zoom panel discussion on Building Effective Data Science Teams organized by RStudio. It was an interesting conversation - I highly recommend spending the hour to watch if you are interested in this field.  I'll summarize some key takeaways from the discussions for me and some thoughts from my side.  1. Communication, Communication, Communication! The panel could not have stressed more the need for MORE communication between the data science team and the various stakeholders (business/functional team, internal customers, etc.)  Data Science(DS) teams/Software Developers tend to like to work in a cave and only like to emerge with a shiny (pun intended!) new object - this is a high-risk game. More communication with the stakeholders allows for the project to be focused/aligned with everyone's expectations and more importantly, creates a sense of 'joint-ownership' of the project and th...