Max Pumperla designed his own career path in data science. He is a freelance software engineer at AnyScale, and also a data science professor. We talked about reinforcement learning, open source contributions, Ray for data scientists, and his view on the data scientists role. If you enjoy the show, subscribe to the channel and leave a 5-star review. Subscribe to Daliana's newsletter on www.dalianaliu.com for more on data science and career.

Max’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-pumperla-a8099354/

Max's GitHub: https://github.com/maxpumperla

Daliana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DalianaLiu

Daliana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu

(00:00:00) Introduction

(00:09:19) How he got a remote job through Twitter

(00:14:06) Introduction to Ray

(00:18:52) Reinforcement learning

(00:23:56) Key lessons on integrating customer feedback

(00:35:12) Flaws in data science job titles

(00:45:51) How to be irreplaceable as a data scientist

(00:48:55) An unconventional career path as a data scientist

(01:12:24) Productivity and work-life balance

(01:28:10) Advice for building a personal brand