Dong Zhou, Data Scientist
After four years of working in postdoc positions, Dong Zhou was starting to re-evaluate academia. "It’s not a real job in terms of compensation and stability. I decided to quit postdoc and try working in industry."
Zhou started to explore learning software development and data science. "I started off trying to learn with books, but I was missing projects, and how to put everything together."
"After that, I tried Coursera, but I didn't like how the videos dictated the pace I learned at."
After reading a post on the Dataquest blog, Dong tried learning with Dataquest.
Learning with Dataquest
Dong credits the career counseling as being key to his success. "I got a lot of advice from Vik. Because I've never worked in industry before, I was able to ask him about his experience."
Before Dataquest, I was wasting time by learning the wrong things. Dataquest pointed me to the right track.
"I asked him a lot about job hunting. It had a big impact on helping me find a job. Having someone senior to guide you is very helpful."
A New Career
Zhou was successful in gaining a job with Schrodinger as a Senior Software Developer. He develops chemical simulation software for use in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and materials science research.
"I'm on a team of software developers. I get to combine my scientific background with my new career."
Asked about how Dataquest helped him find a job, Zhou had the following to say:
Dataquest helped me in my search for an industry job. I wished I had found it earlier.