212: I Quit My Six-Figure Data Science Job. Was It Worth It?

Speaker: 00:00:01

And, um, I'm gonna be resigning from

ExxonMobil That was me quitting my

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six-figure data science job almost

five years ago to do something

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ridiculously stupid, and it was almost

the worst decision I ever made in my

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entire life, and somehow it's ended

up being the best thing I ever did.

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Today, I'll tell you the full story

that I've waited to tell five years

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on exactly what happened, why I did

it, and was it worth it in the end.

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I started my career as a chemical lab

technician, and I absolutely hated my job.

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I learned about data science

and got immediately hooked.

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I was like, "Wow, this is

the coolest thing ever.

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I wanna become a data scientist."

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And I worked really hard to learn all

the stuff I needed to learn to become

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a data scientist, and I ultimately

landed this six-figure job at

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ExxonMobil, which utilized my chemistry

background to be a data scientist.

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I moved from Utah to Texas

to work at their headquarters

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there, and it was a great job.

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It was awesome.

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I got paid over six figures.

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I got a really cushy desk job.

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I literally never worked

over 40 hours a week.

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Um, I liked my coworkers.

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I liked the campus that we were on.

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Everything was really great, and I

had my dream data scientist life.

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And that's how everything was until

it wasn't, and everything went wrong,

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and I was absolutely miserable.

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Although everything on the outside

looked amazing, and it was, I really

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wasn't fulfilled at my job for a couple

different reasons, but basically, I

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thought I was a really good contributor.

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I thought I had really good ideas.

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I thought I was bringing a lot to the

table, and, uh, not a lot of that was

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getting reflected at the company, and

I grew really tired and sick of it.

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For example, earlier, I had built an app

that they, not me, had deemed worth over

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a billion dollars, and yes, that's B

with a billion dollars, and I don't feel

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like I was getting the ownership or the

credit that I did on this entire project.

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I had also started to post a lot

on LinkedIn and become kind of a

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thought leader in terms of data

analytics plus oil and gas, and I...

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My posts started getting

recognized by people at Exxon.

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So for example, a VP of Exxon saw one

of my posts, reached out to me, and

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was like, "Hey, I wanna talk to you

about data analytics at ExxonMobil."

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And I said, "Great.

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My manager and I would love to do

that with you," because keep in

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mind, I'm an individual contributor.

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I'm not a manager.

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I'm a nobody.

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And the VP says, "No, I don't

want you to bring your manager.

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I just want you to come."

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And I said, "Okay."

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And so I told my manager, I'm like,

"Hey, this VP wants to talk to me.

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I'm gonna go talk to him," and

my manager wouldn't let me.

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And I was...

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felt like I was being trapped, basically,

in my role, and that got really

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unfulfilling in this, like, corporate

bureaucracy that I really just got

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sick of, and I knew I was miserable

because I started tracking how happy

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I was to walk in the door every day.

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And instead of, you know, sevens and

eights on how happy I was, it was,

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like, twos and threes, and at that

point, I knew something had to change.

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But to what, I didn't really know.

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I was always interested

in being an entrepreneur.

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I had tried to start some businesses

in high school and college, and none

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of them had worked out whatsoever,

but I was always fascinated by, you

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know, owning your own business and

trying to do something on your own.

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But I'm, like, extremely risk adverse.

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I'm pretty cautious, and starting

my own business seemed way too much

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of a risk for, for me to pursue.

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And honestly, I would have never

have pursued it had it not been

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for my loving and supportive wife

really encouraging me to try it out.

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She knew how much it meant to me.

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She thought I could do it, and she

believed in me more than I believed in

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myself, and so with her confidence, I- I

went ahead and I did this: Hey, what's up?

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And, um, I'm gonna be

resigning from ExxonMobil.

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Um, it's a super hard decision.

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Um, I just think I, I see

myself going in, in different

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directions than, than the company

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Um, yeah, it pretty much has.

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Okay, sounds good.

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Thanks.

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Bye

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I did it.

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Oh my gosh, that was so...

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Crazy.

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And you might have sensed a little

bit of emotion at the end of that

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last clip, and it's because I had

just done something that terrified me.

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I was really scared.

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I didn't know what I was doing.

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I didn't know how I was going

to bring income to my family.

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I didn't know if this was gonna work.

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Heck, every indicator of me being

an entrepreneur previously proved

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that this wasn't going to work.

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I had no track record, no idea how

to actually run a business, and

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you can hear a little bit of my

thoughts from this journal entry of

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my last day driving home from work.

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I'm just grateful beyond belief

to my Heavenly Father for, for

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giving me that experience, um,

and giving me my next experience.

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I don't know much about

my next experience.

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It's, it's new, and it's scary,

and it's, you know, not something

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I've truly done before, and there's

a huge risk that I'm taking.

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Um, but definitely leaving your corporate

job to set out on your own is huge, and I

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thank God for giving me this opportunity.

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I really feel lucky and almost

unworthy of this experience Um, but

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instead of feeling unworthy, I'm

just gonna feel grateful and lucky.

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And yeah, we'll see what

the next six months bring.

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Today is January 20th, 2020.

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I'll see you in a year or six months.

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The next six months were some of the

craziest months of my entire life,

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and I was scared out of my mind.

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I was scared to be doing

this whole business thing.

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I didn't know what I was doing.

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Um, but I did it, and I did it

scared, despite being scared.

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So basically, I was doing consulting

work and freelance work, where basically

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companies would reach out to me for d-

doing different data projects, and I

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would do the data projects for them.

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So I worked for a cybersecurity

company analyzing their

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data, and it was lots of fun.

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I got to analyze data, kind of be on

my own terms, and be a little bit more

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useful and helpful to these companies

than I was previously at my last job.

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And then one day, a LinkedIn influencer,

Kate Strachnyi, reached out to me,

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and she's like, "Hey, I'm looking for

someone to make these data visualization

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courses," and I love data visualization.

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And I was like, "Sure, I'll be

the author of those courses."

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So I made a Python data visualization

course and an R data visualization course.

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And at one point, she offhandedly said,

"Yeah, well, maybe someday you'll have

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your own academy, your own data academy,

and you could do more courses like this."

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And I was like, "Who, me?

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I don't think that's the case."

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But as my time went on with

freelancing and consulting, I

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actually realized I love to teach.

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I reflected back on what I did at Exxon

and what I actually really enjoyed

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there, and I actually led basically a

data nerd club at Exxon, and I loved it.

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I loved teaching them.

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I loved learning from other people.

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I loved, you know, just helping

people do data projects.

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And I realized, man, I love this.

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This is something I actually wanna pursue.

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And I thought, well, I pivoted

from being a chemical lab

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technician to a data scientist.

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What if I made a course all about

pivoting your career into data science?

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I think that would be really

interesting, and there's not a whole

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lot like this on the market right now.

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And for the other 20 hours a week, I'd

work on my education product, this course

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I was building that I was gonna call

Data Career Jumpstart because it was all

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about jump-starting your data career.

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And after working on that course

for about four months, I launched

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it on August 18th of 2021.

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And I was really nervous 'cause

I had literally just spent three

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months of my life making this

course, and I made $0 from it so far.

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So I was very nervous because I

had to make that money up, because

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otherwise I just wasted all this time.

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And I was like, "I don't

know if anyone's gonna join.

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I don't know if I- this is worth it.

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I don't know if I did

the right thing or not."

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And looking back on it, I would change

a lot of things that I did differently.

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But the course launch came

along, and, uh, it went okay.

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It was a little bit worse than

I expected, but not terribly.

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I was, like, kind of in the middle of

like, "Okay, do I spend more time on

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this, or do I go back to contracting?"

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And I, I ended up picking up a few

more contracting, uh, agreements

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because I was like, "I don't know

if this course thing, uh, is for me.

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I don't know if I'm good at it.

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I don't know if, uh, you

know, how this program is.

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Let's just see these first

batch of students, how they

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do, and we'll go from there."

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Now, this program was designed

around landing your first data

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job, pivoting into data science

at the time, by building projects.

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I've always been such a big

believer in building projects.

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Um, and at the time, you know,

now I have the famous SPN method.

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At the time it was the PPP method,

the 3P method, uh, which was to build

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personal projects on your portfolio.

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And the idea was that in this

boot camp you'd come to, we'd

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build personal projects that

we'd put them on a portfolio.

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What made them personal projects?

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It was all using your data.

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So, like, for instance, we'd use your

Spotify listening music data, your

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Apple Watch or Fitbit fitness data, um,

your screen time data from your phone.

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And we built projects in Google Studio, in

Python, in R, all with your personal data.

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And of course, I still had all of

the resume and the networking, the

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cold messaging, the actual, like, how

do you talk to hiring managers and

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recruiters aspect of the SPN method now.

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But I just didn't call it

the SPN method back then.

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I was also doing weekly office hours

with our students and meeting with them

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one-on-one to make sure that they got

all the help that they possibly needed.

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Now, in that first batch of students,

some of them did land jobs, but many

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of them really struggled to land jobs.

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And when I looked back at, like, who had

success versus who didn't have success,

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I learned something really important.

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Number one, although doing personal

projects was really cool, I think it held

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a lot of students back for two reasons.

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One, using your personal data is often

hard to collect Especially if you

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haven't been trying to do it for months.

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Like, if you're not collecting

your screen time data, there's

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not, like, a magical button on

your iPhone that just exports it.

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You have to kind of be thinking about

it, how to get this data out as you go.

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Getting your Spotify data

required using an API and also

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for you to be using Spotify.

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Maybe you don't have a Fitbit or

maybe you don't have an Apple Watch,

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so some of that analysis was hard.

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Personal data is really cool, but

you have to be really deliberate on

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collecting it over a long period of

time to get any meaningful analysis.

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And number two, although I really

believe that personal projects are

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great, I figured that doing more

industry-focused projects would be better.

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Because although analyzing your own

screen time data is cool, and, like,

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obviously that shows that you can gather,

clean, analyze, and visualize data, and

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that can be applied to any industry,

doing, like, more industry-specific data

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would perhaps make a better portfolio

project for a more generic student.

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The second thing I learned when I

looked at who had actually landed jobs

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is the people who landed jobs weren't

landing data science jobs like I landed.

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They were landing a little bit

lower-position jobs, like data analyst

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or business intelligence engineer.

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And I realized that teaching people to

pivot from, you know, a non-technical

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space into a data scientist role was

way too big of a jump, especially

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to do that in less than six months.

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It made a lot more sense to do a

smaller jump of from whatever role

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that they were in to a data analyst

role, and then eventually from a

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data analyst to a data scientist, you

know, a year or two down the road.

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And so I had a big problem.

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I had built out all this curriculum

where I was teaching people to go from,

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you know, a chemical lab technician or

whatever non-technical, non-data role

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that you were in to a data scientist

role by building personal projects.

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And that method didn't really 100% work

because personal projects were hard

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to make, and the jump from wherever

you're at to data scientist was too big.

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Around this same time, I had a really

interesting professional/personal, I

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don't wanna call it a crisis, I'll just

call it an event that went on in my

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life that, uh, was pretty traumatizing.

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And this event is basically the

reason I haven't talked about

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this for five-plus years now.

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I didn't really feel

comfortable talking about it.

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And now I feel like it's been long

enough in the past that hopefully

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no one else cares and everyone

else has forgotten about me at

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Exxon and it's all in the past.

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But I'm fingers crossed on that.

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And to be honest, I don't even

remember exactly how it started.

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My guess, if I had to remember

back, is when I left Exxon, I made a

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LinkedIn post in front of the famous

ExxonMobil cube, you know, announcing

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my departure from the company.

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And I guess a journalist must have

seen that picture and reached out to

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me on LinkedIn wanting to interview

me for a story or something about,

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you know, leaving ExxonMobil.

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And in my head I was

just like, "Okay, sure.

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Whatever.

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I don't...

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I go- I'm happy to talk about

leaving Exxon, no problem.

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Not a big deal," right?

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But I really wasn't paying attention

to who the journalist was or who they

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worked for or what they were doing.

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I was...

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It was all just kind of on the side

for me and I was like, "Hey, maybe some

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exposure would be good for business."

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And honestly, I pretty much forgot

about it because it was just, like,

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a one-time interview, and then they

sent a photographer to my house.

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They're like, "We might use

photos, we might not," right?

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And then a few months go by, I forget

about it, and then I, uh, basically get

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a magazine with Elon Musk on the cover.

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And look, I'm in the freaking-

Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.

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So they published this huge article

about people who were leaving Exxon,

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and I was one of the only named sources.

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In fact, I was one out of two

named sources in the article.

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And like I said, I didn't

really know what I was doing.

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I was young.

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I was just kind of doing this

as a side piece, and I was like,

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"Oh, maybe some extra exposure."

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And that article went extremely viral.

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It was posted on Bloomberg and

Reuters and Yahoo, and picked up

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by dozens of different outlets and

posted all over the internet with

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my happy face on the front page.

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And this kind of opened a can of worms

that I wish had never been opened before.

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But basically, on a corporate

forum called The Layoff, people

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started posting about this article

and specifically posting about me.

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Now, this forum is completely

anonymous, and so it's kind of like

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Reddit, where people can say whatever

they want with no accountability,

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responsibility, or reliability

on if it's actually true or not.

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So in one of these forums, the

article got posted, and basically

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people started commenting.

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I'll go ahead and read some of

the comments that people left.

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All right, number one, "Avery Smith

is a worthless data scientist."

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Hmm, great.

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Number two, "For all the fact-checkers

out there, Avery didn't leave.

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He got pipped."

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I was in his group.

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He continued to miss deadlines for

projects and barely logged in during

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the work from home era last year.

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So that's 100% false, and if

this person was in my group,

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you know better than that.

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If you don't know what PIP means, I used

to think it was an ExxonMobil only term,

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but I've seen other people use it as well.

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It stands for performance

improvement plan.

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It basically means you weren't doing

good as an employee, and they warned

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you by PIPping you, by basically saying,

"Hey, you need to get improved quickly.

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Otherwise, we're gonna let you go."

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And then they let you go.

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Now, there were layoffs at ExxonMobil

happening around this time.

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In fact, they told us in July that

layoffs would be happening in December.

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And truth be told, I kind of did wanna

get laid off because then I'd get a

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three-month severance package of pay.

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And I already knew that I wanted

to quit my job, so yeah, sure,

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I would've loved to get PIP'd.

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I did every project I was asked

to do, and I did a good job, but I

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wasn't gonna be mad if I got laid off.

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I unfortunately was not laid off, and

I had to quit in January and only get

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two weeks vacation paid out instead

of the three-month severance plan.

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Comment number three.

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"Wow, that one pump chump Smith

left to start his own company.

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: 00:14:13

Must be one of BK's hot shots."

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: 00:14:15

I don't even know what

that means, but thank you?

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: 00:14:17

That's offensive.

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: 00:14:18

Comment number four.

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: 00:14:19

"No telling how inflated Avery Smith will

get seeing himself featured in an article.

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: 00:14:22

Cringe."

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: 00:14:23

Yeah, to be honest, that

was probably the case.

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: 00:14:25

I was probably pretty stoked to be,

like, the front page of Yahoo for a day.

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: 00:14:28

I wish I wouldn't have done

it, to be honest, so...

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: 00:14:30

Okay, that of itself,

not really a big deal.

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: 00:14:33

I- when I chose to do content and

put my life on the internet, I knew

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: 00:14:38

these types of comments would come.

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: 00:14:39

However, things continued to get worse.

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: 00:14:41

A few days later on the same

forum, this post was left here.

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: 00:14:45

"What happened in Energy 3 today?"

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: 00:14:47

Energy 3 is one of the buildings

on the campus at ExxonMobil.

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: 00:14:49

"Got a stand down meeting

invitation but suddenly canceled.

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: 00:14:52

Rumor said something obnoxious happened."

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: 00:14:54

So basically this means, like, the

campus was put on emergency mode where

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: 00:14:57

there was some sort of threat on campus.

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: 00:14:59

And this comment was left there.

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: 00:15:01

"A former employee, he was mentioned

in some article that was posted on here

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: 00:15:04

last week," that's me, "for creating

a data science company while working

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: 00:15:08

at Exxon last year, came back onto

campus and caused a scene in E3."

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: 00:15:12

"I suppose the attention the article got

caused ExxonMobil lawyers to look into it.

325

: 00:15:16

And then there was a bunch of comments

that I started my company on ExxonMobil

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: 00:15:20

time with ExxonMobil computers, and

I should be stripped of my company.

327

: 00:15:24

And that wasn't true at all, but I just

didn't like the rumors being spread

328

: 00:15:27

about that because you just never

know in corporate world what people

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: 00:15:30

will say and what companies will do.

330

: 00:15:31

'I suppose the attention the article

got caused ExxonMobil lawyers to look

331

: 00:15:35

into it, and they seized ownership

of his company since it's technically

332

: 00:15:38

company property as it was created during

ExxonMobil time on an ExxonMobil computer.

333

: 00:15:42

And today he came back

to express his rage.

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: 00:15:44

Not sure what it accomplished though.

335

: 00:15:46

Long story short, if you're going

to create another company during

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: 00:15:49

ExxonMobil time on an ExxonMobil

computer, don't advertise it.'"

337

: 00:15:52

And the comments went on in that forum to

basically insinuate that I, like, jumped

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: 00:15:57

in an Uber and snuck onto campus 'cause

the campus there is super high security.

339

: 00:16:01

You basically can't get in the

campus, and then you can't get in

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: 00:16:04

any door, and then you can't get

up any elevator without, like, two

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: 00:16:08

different keys basically to get in.

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: 00:16:09

That I somehow snuck through all of

that and started throwing papers all

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: 00:16:12

over the place and trashing the office

because I was mad at ExxonMobil.

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: 00:16:17

Now, obviously, and I shouldn't even

have to say this, none of that is true.

345

: 00:16:20

And honestly, it felt

like a smear campaign.

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: 00:16:22

It felt like someone was out to get me.

347

: 00:16:23

And I honestly just got kinda scared

because I just didn't like people

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: 00:16:26

talking about me in untruthful ways.

349

: 00:16:28

So this is where my risky bet

of quitting my job and starting

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: 00:16:31

my business has gotten me.

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: 00:16:32

In a boot camp that half works,

and this whole newspaper written

352

: 00:16:37

about me and everyone writing

mean things about me online.

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: 00:16:39

Was it worth it?

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: 00:16:40

At this point, I didn't think it was.

355

: 00:16:42

My wife and I had also decided at this

point that we wanted to have kids and

356

: 00:16:46

bring in some babies into the world,

and, uh, I was in a position where

357

: 00:16:49

it didn't feel like I was ready to

add the extra responsibility into

358

: 00:16:53

my life because look at my business.

359

: 00:16:55

It's not doing as well

as I hope it would do.

360

: 00:16:57

And so truth be told, I honestly

felt like giving up some days.

361

: 00:17:00

I wanted to go back to

the corporate world.

362

: 00:17:02

I wanted to stop doing the boot camp.

363

: 00:17:04

I wanted to stop doing consulting and

just do a normal job because that was

364

: 00:17:07

normal and boring, and no one would get

mad at me, and, uh, it would be easier.

365

: 00:17:10

And honestly, thanks to God and some

other mentors, I did not give up,

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: 00:17:14

and I redid the entire Bootcamp.

367

: 00:17:17

From beginning to end, I redid everything.

368

: 00:17:19

Now, the core concepts of projects

and networking and learning the

369

: 00:17:22

skills were, were still there.

370

: 00:17:23

In fact, that was the whole basis of it.

371

: 00:17:25

I sat down on a piece of paper

and pen for days trying to come

372

: 00:17:28

up with the method name, and

eventually landed on the SBN Method.

373

: 00:17:31

Learn the skills, build the project,

and do the networking, and that is the

374

: 00:17:34

formula to landing your first data job.

375

: 00:17:37

I redid the entire curriculum, redid

all of the projects from scratch,

376

: 00:17:40

focusing on industry projects, not

personal projects, and put greater

377

: 00:17:43

emphasis on skills that were actually

being used by the general practitioners

378

: 00:17:48

of data analysts, not data scientists.

379

: 00:17:51

I no longer was trying to help

people go from, you know, whatever

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: 00:17:54

job they had to whatever data job.

381

: 00:17:56

Specifically, I wanted to help

people land data analyst jobs,

382

: 00:17:59

because those are the people in

my first bootcamp who had success.

383

: 00:18:02

I would do 10 modules.

384

: 00:18:03

Each module would have a project, each

module would have a skill, and each

385

: 00:18:06

module would have a networking activity.

386

: 00:18:08

And I launched that at the very end

of: 2022

387

: 00:18:11

thing Data Analytics Accelerator.

388

: 00:18:14

And the results, well,

they've been unbelievable.

389

: 00:18:16

We've had 1,000-plus students in the

accelerator program, and we've helped so

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: 00:18:19

many people land their first data job.

391

: 00:18:21

I made enough money to support my family

and my new babies into my family's

392

: 00:18:26

world, and I got immense fulfillment

out of helping people get out of

393

: 00:18:29

careers that they felt miserable, like

I felt at my chemical lab technician,

394

: 00:18:32

and help them get into careers that

they truly and actually enjoyed.

395

: 00:18:36

Just as one example, my friend from

my LDS mission called me one day.

396

: 00:18:39

She was a special needs education

teacher, and she said, "Avery,

397

: 00:18:42

I can't take it anymore.

398

: 00:18:43

I know you help people

become a data analyst.

399

: 00:18:45

I wanna become a data analyst."

400

: 00:18:47

And I said, "Great.

401

: 00:18:47

Let's get you in the program."

402

: 00:18:49

And a few months later, she called

me and left me this voicemail.

403

: 00:18:52

Avery freaking Smith.

404

: 00:18:53

I...

405

: 00:18:54

Sorry I'm bothering you right now.

406

: 00:18:56

I just had to call you because I

just got a phone call from Chase.

407

: 00:18:59

The interview went good, and they would

like to move forward with the hiring

408

: 00:19:05

process, so I am beyond excited right now.

409

: 00:19:08

Holy cow.

410

: 00:19:09

Um, anyways, they said they would send

official offers in probably three days.

411

: 00:19:15

So I'm just, phew, literally

so excited I can't even, like,

412

: 00:19:20

think straight right now.

413

: 00:19:21

Um, I just wanna tell you thank you.

414

: 00:19:23

If anything more, this whole process

has made me extremely, extremely

415

: 00:19:27

grateful for the people that the

Lord has blessed my life with.

416

: 00:19:30

So I wanted to call you and tell

you thank you so much, and I am

417

: 00:19:34

excited to keep learning and growing,

and I'll message you and fill you

418

: 00:19:38

in on where it goes from here.

419

: 00:19:40

But I just wanted to tell you thank you.

420

: 00:19:42

I really appreciate you.

421

: 00:19:43

It's been a heck of a ride the

last five years, and it's 100%

422

: 00:19:47

worth it for voicemails like that.

423

: 00:19:49

The opportunity I've had to help people

shape their lives and shape their careers

424

: 00:19:52

is truly one I don't take lightly,

and I'm really grateful and humbled

425

: 00:19:55

that I get to be in this situation.

426

: 00:19:57

So that big risk, that stupid

decision, that reason why I quit my

427

: 00:20:01

data job five years ago, 100% worth

it, and I've got a good feeling

428

: 00:20:04

it's only going to get better.

429

: 00:20:06

So if you wanna experience the next

five years of this data journey,

430

: 00:20:09

please hit Subscribe, and I'll

see you guys in the next episode.