Career advice for your 20s and 30s | Tina Huang

0:00This video is sponsored by Sharpest Minds, but more about them later in the video. Hey guys, how's it going? Welcome back to another video. Before we get started, I just wanted to let you guys know that I have a newsletter called Boomskeepward. It's a weekly newsletter about learning, productivity, coding, and basically how to get your shit together. So if you're interested, check out this link over here, also linked in descriptions. It is totally free. So in this video, I'm going to talk about my career advice for people in their 20s. This video is the video that I wish that I had when I was first starting off my career at 20. And I think it would have saved me at least a few existential crises, as well as a couple years long away. Career advice number one is to get started. Oh my god. I have known so many people who are just like, I don't know what will make me a lot of money that I would like and that I'm good at. And then they kind of just like agonize over this. They bounce around a lot of different unrelated industries and different jobs. War even worse, they just kind of put it off and take jobs that they know that they wouldn't want to stay in in the future.

1:00And just hope that one day they will just magically figure out what it is that they want to do and then they can start their lives. You see, the mistake is that you shouldn't be running around trying to figure out what you like, what you're passionate about. Instead, you should be getting started and developing skills that are considered valuable to society. By the way, I highly recommend this book called So Good They Can't Ignore You. It talks a lot more about this. And I talked about it as well in this video over here. So, you know, I started off in my undergraduate doing pharmacology and the issue is that I really, really just didn't like medicine. Like I did everything that I had to do. I did the clinical work. I did the research. I had my grades and stuff, but I just really, really didn't like it. So at some point, I was just like, I can't do this, right? Like I'm done. So after those four years of working really, really hard, I basically had like a really big, extra big existential crisis because I didn't know what to do now. I'm like, quarter life crisis, everyone's talking about it. So at that time, I didn't know too much, but I did know is that from the people that graduated from my undergraduate, the people who didn't have issues learning jobs and the people who got hate high salaries were the people in computer science and computer engineering.

2:04Like basically the people who knew how to code. So I took a couple courses in computer science and then I got a job in bioinformatics, which is like applied data science to biology. And it was like the only place I would hire me because I had that biology background. I learned how to code in R. I also learned how to apply coding to a real world context. After doing that for about a year, I was like, okay, like I think I can do this. You know, this is, this is okay. So I thought that I should accumulate more of this valuable skill set by doing a computer science master's at the University of Pennsylvania in the States. Because then I could really be like those CS people and from that program, I saw that people got really good tech jobs that had really good salary and really good perks. And I wanted to do that. So that's what I did by focusing on developing a skill that is considered to be valuable instead of trying to figure out what I was passionate about. And that allowed me to become valuable. I started to figure out what parts of coding that I liked. I liked high level programming as opposed to lower level programming. I also explored data science, which I liked more than software engineering. And from there, I explored different industries like finance and tech and different topics like integrity, for example.

3:07I was able to do this because I had that valuable skill. Because I'm pretty sure if I just sat there and just try to think really hard about what it is that I wanted to do, what it is that I like to do, more just like try to bunch of random things. I probably still wouldn't have figured it out. And my 20s would have just flown by like that. It's the fact that you can build these skills overnight. You know, like they take a lot of time to nurture and to develop just because you decide that you want to be a teacher where you want to be a data scientist, you want to be a software engineer, you can't just suddenly become that because why would anybody hire you to do that? So if in your 20s, you waste a lot of time and you just kind of like bounce around different jobs and different industries, then you wouldn't build up these skills and these accomplishments and these connections that are the foundation for establishing and building up a career. This is a great segue into career tip number two. It is the fact that career decisions are not as set in stone as you probably think it is. I think the reason why people don't commit in the first place is because they feel like if they commit to something, then that just like locks them in.

4:08Like they have to do this now for the rest of their lives. And I think that's a really, really big misconception. There's a lot more fluidity in these careers than you probably think there is. Like even for people who get an MD, decide to be a doctor, I personally have known several people who then go on to do Mettech, where like pharmaceutical or medical device sales were consulting people hop around all the time. And as time goes on, there's certain new jobs are being created, certain things that are being disrupted and your career will also shift with that. I have a friend who went from software engineering into sales and he's like absolutely killing it. It's because like he has that coding background, right? So he's able to automate a lot of the sales funnels and also figure out like where it is that he should be investing in. A really common hop is also from data scientists to product manager. So pick an in demand skill and get good at that first. And then you can pick up other skills along the way. My criteria for what is a good skilled pick is that it pays well and is in high demand. It doesn't lock you in. So not something that's like super niche and something that you don't hate. Of course, I'm really biased. I think that learning how to code is one of like the best skills that you can possibly pick up.

5:12But they're also obviously other ones as well. Like video editing, content marketing. So get started. Okay. I promise everything's going to work out. Third piece of career advice for people in their 20s. Learn from your sympathies. That when I was doing pharmacology, I literally thought that there were four career paths I could choose from. I become a doctor, a pharmacist, a nurse, or do research like thousand. In fact, all of the people I saw went down those paths, but that wasn't true at all. There were lots of people that went into different things as well. There are people who went to politics, people who went to patent law. And this is where having mentors can be so, so crucial and so important. I guess I turned out okay. But if I had someone who could have told me, Hey, like there's so many more options out there. Here are the things that you might have not considered. Here are the things that are in demand. And they may have been able to introduce me to other people, other connections that would have further allowed me to make better decisions and also opportunities. Like people, these people can give you referrals, right? To like different companies and different places. What I wanted to make that switch from pre-med into doing coding and computer science, I, if I had a mentor, I would have done that way sooner.

6:13And because my program was very geared towards people who became software engineers, I had to figure out a lot of things myself. I learned about computer science knowledge and software engineering. And I didn't really know that much about data science. So I had to go learn SQL by myself, for example, and do all that interview prep by myself. Now, when I think about something that I want to do, something that I even want to explore, the first thing that I do is try to find a mentor in that space. For example, Kenji is my mentor for doing YouTube in data science. And at work, I talk to lots and lots of people who were in adjacent roles and also more senior than me, for me to understand where my career was developing. What are the options that were open to me? The question is probably, how do you find a good mentor that? Sometimes you send people a terrible video, and for some reason they respond to you, and they cheer you on. Think you can. You can also ask your supplies who graduated college before you, and they can offer their guidance. Or you can just kind of mention what it is that you're interested in to your friends and your family, and they might be able to introduce you to someone who works in that field. However, with that being said, I know that sometimes you just don't know any part

7:15of the in that field, and just co-ocalling people probably they don't work out super well for you. So in cases like this, in my opinion, it's not a bad idea to be open to paying for mentorship. Nowadays, there's a lot of platforms that offer services to get guided mentorship, like official mentorships that you pay for that can help you land different roles, help you explore different options. And if you're interested in transitioning into data science specifically, then you should be very interested in the sponsor of today's video, sharpest minds. The world of data science is getting increasingly more broad, and sub-dividing and splintering into sub-neissues and sub-disciplines. Cookie cutter curriculums from bookhams and MOOCs can only get you so far. They're great starting points, but they have to be general to appeal to a wider audience. Plus, there's a big gap between the data science fundamentals that you learn in a bookamp and what it's actually like in practice. A great way to close this gap is to find a data science mentor who's able to help you with your specific goals and weaknesses. Sharpers minds is a marketplace for data science mentorships. It's home to 400 plus mentors. Senior data scientists and machine learning practitioners working at top tech companies,

8:19startups and blue chip companies. You can sign up for free and find the perfect mentor for you. And the best part about sharpest minds is that you don't pay unless you land a job. Mentors on sharpest minds invest their time in you on an income share agreement. So everyone's incentives are aligned. They make money only when you do true. So check them out, visiting the link over here also linked in descriptions. Alright, back to the video. Advice number four. Create a vision for yourself. This is my vision. In my vision book over here. So I'm based in China, Canada and US by able to travel and work wherever I want because I am fully remote and have multiple streams of income, mostly online that is at least 50% passive. Very lofty goal. This allows me to spontaneously travel different places and focus on what I find the most impact for work without worrying about making ends meet. I'm running my own business and I have a team that I trust and the business is running smoothly and I can focus on learning and creating contact. I also have goals that I set on a year by year basis as well as metrics to measure my progress towards those goals. I won't go into too much detail about this here, but you can check out this video over here. You might have noticed that in my vision,

9:20the career aspect and the lifestyle aspect, they interact with each other a lot. And that's because for most people, your career determines a large part of what your lifestyle is going to be. So if you can't envision exactly what your career is going to look like, you can do something like me, like envision what your lifestyle is going to be like. Like how do you want to live your life? Like for example, if you want to be able to travel around a lot all over the world, then you probably shouldn't be picking something that is specific to a certain region. So now this vision that I have over here, is it going to change? Yes. As life happens, as I learn new things, as the world around me changes, it is definitely going to change a lot over the years. But I still think it's really important to have this working version because it gives you something to work towards. Oftentimes, the most life-changing things are not natural progressions of your day-to-day life. They're the intentional things, the stuff that you go out of the way to do, the things that are hard. For example, does YouTube channel change my life? But I didn't just accidentally become a YouTuber and grow my channel. Nor did I accidentally go and get a computer science master. The one thing that I do want to point out, though, is that you should make sure that this vision is your vision.

10:21Oftentimes parents and society, they have an idea of what they want your life to look like. And it's really normal for us to just internalize and accept it. Like for example, my mom is like, Tina, you should become doctor. Doctor is good. And I was like, yes, okay. I'm not saying that you shouldn't take the advice of other people, like definitely do that. But in the end, make sure that you are the one that's making that choice because it's your life. Career advice, number five. Don't stop learning after school. The world that we live in changes so quickly. When I started university back in 2013, data science was like a new thing will thing. It was so niche at that time. And machine learning was like essentially magic. Over the past year, social media content creators that was considered like not a real job. And now it's considered like the dream job of so many people in Gen Z. And also very recently, the pandemic, it's completely shifted the way that we work. So many jobs are remote now. And that opens up so many different opportunities. Things are changing so fast. And it's only going to be faster and faster. So it is a huge mistake. If you're like, I got a job, now I can stop learning. It's really important to upskill your skill set

11:21to keep up with the times. And also to be able to take advantage of the new opportunities that are now available. Like I said before, careers are fluid as new opportunities pop up. And you take advantage of these. You're slowly shifting your own career into something that it will work for you, something that you love. Now to mention, there's just things that they don't teach you at school. Like stuff like budgeting, personal finance, investing. These things you need to learn on your own. And it is extremely important that you do so as soon as possible. All right, that's all I have for you guys today. Do comment below if you have any big career choices where challenges that you're facing right now. Myself and other people in the comments might be able to help. I will see you guys in the next video. We're like,