Hey Reader,

I was not sure whether I should send this newsletter to you (it's not even on my content schedule).

But I really need to get it off my chest and be very honest with you...

If you've followed my work for years, maybe you could help me out and tell me what resonates.

Or you may even have no idea what I'm talking about and hit Unsubscribe, I also totally understand it 🙃.

I'm grateful for every one of you for being on this list and reading my emails 🙏.

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Getting lost

Alright, how should I start…

I've been battling for a while about the direction for my content going forward.

I think somewhere in the past years of content creation, I've lost myself.

I've lost the creative spark, the magic, the thing that drew me into content creation in the first place.

I never imagined I'd come to this reflection point of thinking, wow, I've effectively optimized my voice, my personality, and the fun, OUT of my work.

The channel that I spent my sweat and tears on for years, as much as I hate to admit, has become something I no longer recognize.

I just rewatched some videos I made 4 years ago, one on building a network from the Witcher book series, another on how to learn math for data science. And I got so nostalgic and broke into tears.

When I started my YouTube channel talking about data science, it was my creative outlet.

Even though I was totally exhausted from making weekly videos, while having a day job and a degree on the side...

... I was having lots of fun. I strongly believed I was helping a lot of people while creating genuinely valuable, enjoyable content.

Some of you got a job, an internship in data science thanks to a creative project you created, following along my tutorials.

In the past two years or so, I've been chasing the hot trendy topics, what the sponsors want, the views, and what everyone else is talking about in the AI space.

Now, I honestly miss that good vibe, light, playful vibe... not the FOMO, fear-triggering kind of vibe that's very present in the AI-related content these days.

Am I even helping anyone if my content is no longer enjoyable?

I guess when your hobby becomes a job, it's harder to keep the balance between producing things that you love and are really proud of, and things that actually earn you a living.

It becomes a grind, a hamster wheel, and the speed of it just knocked me off course and made me lose sight of why I started in the first place.

To me, working with data is an art. And I tried to fuse that passion into my videos, and I want to help more people find curiosity in the data field. Learn the craft, get competent, get fulfilled.

I love the data field, and it was a lens through which I could understand the world around me. I believe data is beautiful, and it can tell you a lot of stories you didn't know. And the maths and science behind it just awed me.

Heck, maybe I'm too "artsy" for the job. Maybe I should just be prepared to become a starving artist, if I just stay stubborn and try to be myself :P.

Anyway, I'm trying to find how I can be of value to you, while still staying true to who I am, my experience and interests.

AI, trends, and data science landscape

You know, data science as a field has seen massive changes in the past years because of AI (and I guess, like anything, it evolves).

Right now, as things stand, traditional data science and data analysis have changed. Generative AI and LLMs have changed the data workflow. For good and bad.

The general public has grown more interested, over the past years, in how to use AI, how to build with AI. And gradually I pivoted my content to these kinds of topics, and maybe that's the reason you ended up on my email list reading this very email.

Initially, I was just curious to learn about LLMs and what I could do with them, so I created the content also as a way of learning new things.

But over time, I came to a fundamental realization that I need to speak honestly about.

Building applications with AI is much more engineering-focused. Things like building a production AI app, handling backend, frontend, databases, logging, etc. are mostly software engineering disciplines.

Most data science channels have either died or completely pivoted to AI Engineering content. The demand for AI Engineers, or whatever the newest role is called (Forward Deployment Engineer or something), is high.

As much as I want to be excited to teach about AI Engineering, I just feel "meh"...

Firstly, it's not my lane. I'm further away from building AI products than most software engineers. Although I did study Computer Science, I'm not a practitioner in this field.

Secondly, I'm just more naturally wired towards the data analytics space. I like analytical thinking, doing (statistical) analysis, and the communication side of it. And for me traditional machine learning is way more interesting (and has more reliable and proven business value in critical use cases) than the new fancy large language models. I'll still use AI as a productivity tool, but I want to be very critical about how to evaluate it, when to trust it, and when to push back.

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So this is my brain vomiting, thinking about my next step forward.

Do you have thoughts and suggestions for me? I'd appreciate it.

And if you've ever made a career move or changed direction more because of "trends" or necessity than your true interests, I'd love to hear that story too, and how you navigated it.

Btw, for those of you interested in the cybersecurity career I talked about a while ago, the video is live here.

Thu 🤗

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