My Journey from Industrial Engineering to Data Science
Hello, my name is Patrick Cudo and I am currently enrolled in the Data Science Immersive with General Assembly. I just finished week 5 of the cohort and it has been quite the journey so far. The instructors and classmates have been great to work with. The “fire hose” analogy is spot on, there is some much information in such a short amount of time, but the support from the instructors has been great. I have always been interested in data with a background in the transportation industry. This is what led me to General Assembly.
Background
Before I enrolled in the Data Science Immersive, I was working as an industrial engineer for a fortune 500 company. The benefits working with a company like that are great, but the culture can be another story. This uneven culture fit for me was the first step into looking for additional education opportunities.
I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems and Operation Management with a minor in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The time I spent studying in this major was fun and enjoyable. The degree helped me land the job as an industrial engineer.
Working as an industrial engineer was very fulfilling at times. Developing ways to optimize operating plans, training and mentoring operators, and maintaining the work measurement for all operations were just some of the responsibilities as an engineer. The work measurement was the most interesting, for me, measuring the time for an employee to accomplish a given task. The measurement was performed on the entire operation and the first step in the process was collecting data.
The work measurement provided the operations team with a measure for productivity. If the production team did not meet the measured productivity it was my job to identify the most help needed areas. Once those areas were identified the goal was to train and mentor the management of that area. This process optimized the performance of the targeted areas reducing hours and cost, thus making the operation more cost effective.
The combination of producing the work measurement, identifying most help needed areas and other responsibilities required significant amounts of data. The data was collected in a multitude of ways from Microsoft Access queries to in house web based queries. I found myself spending a lot of time with the data and grew to value its importance, when presented correctly, in making decisions. This is what drove me to find General Assembly and Data Science.
Conclusion
As I mentioned before there were some culture issues with the company I was working with and this ultimately led me to try and find a new path. Industrial engineering allowed me to discover my great appreciation and admiration for data, and once I found General Assembly the decision to make the transition to Data Science was an easy one. My time spent working as an Industrial engineer also provided some insight into the work I would like to do. The ultimate goal once graduated from the immersive would be to use my skills to make a positive impact in the world, working with people, communities and the environment to carry out true change for the better.
