I had the chance to meet Eric Liu back in 2019 and I am forever grateful for this encounter. During our limited interactions, he showed me a new possibility of becoming a data professional, and his words of encouragement made me who I am – a Data Engineer at TD bank.
The Struggle
Back then I was an intern at TD Wealth Operations and my work was laser-focused on improving operational efficiency by automating manual processes using Alteryx. Although I was comfortable completing tasks assigned to me and also performing well in my role at the time, something didn’t feel right. Yes, my manager was supportive and I was absorbing loads of knowledge every day – yet I felt like I was not as valued as I would like it to be. Slowly it came to my realization that I no longer enjoyed the work I was doing and I wanted to make a change. At the time I wasn’t sure what I wanted but I knew I wasn’t satisfied. Coincidentally, I booked a discovery call with Eric, he invited me to a meetup and I had the pleasure to meet him in person.
It was before my final term in university, and I was getting serious about looking for a full-time job. I was weighing my options of settling for a potential return offer and climbing the corporate ladder, or seeking new opportunities instead. I held off the job hunting process because the latter option doesn’t come with a guarantee of success and I didn’t feel prepared. Eric convinced me otherwise. Not only did he inspire me on a path towards becoming a data professional, but gave me the courage to get out of my shell and push my boundaries. Coming from a strong Statistics background, it was natural for me to pursue a Data Analytics career. I started networking internally and it paid off. The new-grads-only Data & Analytics Associate Program caught my eye and I decided to give it a shot. Despite feeling overwhelmingly unprepared, I applied for the associate program.
Fast forward to 2020 – I landed the associate role in the midst of the COVID pandemic. It all felt like a dream come true.
The Unexpected
Life never goes as planned. I started on the infrastructure team with a focus on promoting Alteryx adoption. At first I was puzzled and struggled to fit in the team, as the work turns out to be a lot more technical than I expected. The learning curve was steep and there were lots of difficulties ahead. It was a challenging time but I managed to pull through. The result was fulfilling and I take pride in my accomplishments. More importantly, having participated in the data pipeline framework design, I have identified my career interests in data engineering and I want to further expand my skill set to big data technologies as well as data framework design and solution architecture. If you had told me that I would become a Data Engineer 18 months ago, I wouldn’t believe you. Heck, the option of becoming a Data Engineer never crossed my mind. But I never regret taking chances.
Looking back, within the past year I became known as the resident expert in Alteryx upon successfully establishing Alteryx as the technology of choice to facilitate department SAS migration to SQL-based processes, as well as led the design and develop a strategic data provisioning framework that enables our analysts to have a consolidated data source to efficiently run their analytics. Recently I switched teams and became a Data Engineer. My current focus is to develop an end-to-end automated data validation process framework that allows the end-users to self-serve data ingestion while maintaining data integrity.
Final Thoughts
You are never going to be prepared enough to start. Take a breath and start it now, because if you don’t, you may be losing one of the best opportunities that comes your way. You won’t get unlimited chances to have the things you want and nothing is worse than regretting the opportunities you didn’t seize. So if you are feeling stuck and wanted to make a career change, I encourage you to book a discovery call with Eric.
