Career panel at Mobify
Summary
On the evening of August 16th, BC Data Science workshop participants gathered at Mobify headquarters for a career panel and social event. The panel discussed non-academic career options for mathematicians; how mathematicians should prepare for industry jobs and job interviews; and what differences to expect in industry. More broadly, the panelists discussed career success, personal values, and strategies for achieving career-oriented goals.
The panel included recent graduates in mathematics/statistics now working in industry, as well as a senior manager at Amazon who interfaces with — and hires — mathematicians and computer scientists. The Q&A session was followed by a lively social with complementary food and beverage.
Our panelists
- Lilian Wong, Ph.D. Mathematics (CalTech)
Research Scientist at Amazon Vancouver - Roger Donaldson, Ph.D. Mathematics (CalTech) Technical Consultant at Midvale Applied Mathematics Inc.
- Bernard Chan, Ph.D. Applied Mathematics (Western University) Data Scientist at BuildDirect Technologies
- Megan McCorquodale, M.Sc. Statistics (SFU)
Data Scientist, Absolute Software - Zak Islam
Sr. Manager, AWS Messaging at Amazon Web Services
Career panel takeaways
A collection of resources mentioned by the panelists that could be useful to those contemplating industry.
- Data for Good (Vancouver Chapter)
- The Lean Startup was recommended by Zak as a good book for business-related material important for consultancy and startups.
- Brian Wetton offered resources to IAM students for new indepedent group projects.
For a very useful and developed (esp. for UBC students) list of takeaways and other notes, see Curt da Silva’s BCDataTakeaways readme.