Thanks Mike! Those starting in a field should realize you don’t need to know everything at the beginning, and even the most experienced workers still make mistakes. Imposter syndrome is tough to overcome, but it helps if you understand that early in your career, you’re supposed to be making errors and learning from them. It’s probably more worrying if new employees aren’t making any mistakes!

Also, I do wish that I’d spent more time understanding people in school and less time understanding computers (although that is still helpful). Even quantitative fields like data science require interacting with humans with all their idiosyncrasies and irrational behavior (not that those are bad things. Perfectly rational humans are unable to make good choices in our social world). Beyond merely analyzing numbers, data scientists must be able to communicate the insights hidden within figures to general audiences.