From Novice to Pro: How Understanding Data Engineering Landed Stefan a Job Tomorrow!
Stefan Wellmann started his career as a market research consultant in a market research company. There, he conducted surveys, was responsible for programming questionnaires and did data analysis with the main focus on the front end.
After leveling up his skills and knowledge in the Learn Data Engineering Academy, he was ready for a successful job change and now works as a data engineer in a German IT consulting company.
The struggle finding good training
In the beginning of his data engineering journey, he found it difficult to find comprehensive data engineer training and courses. On platforms like Udemy and Coursera, he struggled with understanding the content. It wasn’t very clear how long the video material is and if he could be a data engineer after. It took him a while to find courses like the ones in the Academy where he got code examples and understandable training videos.
“I was watching videos on YouTube and saw that Andreas speaks German. I thought it could be helpful in detail and checked out his Learn Data Engineering Academy. A data engineer needs to know a lot of tools to find the best way to ingest, process and view data. The Academy was the perfect place as the range of courses was very good and included a lot of different software such as Snowflake - so, very good value for money.”
Leveling up step by step
Stefan tries to watch every course offered and plans to specialize in Microsoft Azure since his new job will involve a lot of work with it. He especially appreciated the step-by-step programming and live preview videos within the Academy.
Overall, Stefan feels that the Learn Data Engineering Academy has helped him understand data engineering better and has met his expectations. Additionally, he holds a favorable opinion of Andreas, the instructor, and finds him to be a nice and likable guy. Stefan plans to integrate what he has learned into his new job as a data engineer.
Start your own journey
We hope you got inspired by Stefan’s journey. Now the big question for you is: are you ready to start your very own Data Engineering success story? Then join our Learn Data Engineering Academy today!
From Medical Doctor to Data Engineering Pro: A Tale of Embracing the World of Data
Despite starting his career as a Medical Doctor in Argentina, Santiago Caraballo has proven himself to be a passionate and enthusiastic technologist. He has a keen interest in exploring innovative solutions, always eager to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in the field. Now, Santiago works as a Data Engineer in an IT consulting company where he excels in conceptual data design, BigQuery, and Dataflow.
When he delved into data engineering, it seemed to him a daunting task keeping up with the latest technology advancements and finding the right educational material to focus on.
“With new releases and tools constantly emerging, it can feel like a challenge to keep up with everything. Cloud technology, in particular, is evolving at an unprecedented pace, making it easy to feel overwhelmed and uncertain about where to focus your attention.”
Investment in professional development
Because of that, Santiago appreciated the Learn Data Engineering Academy for its carefully structured curriculum. He also values the opportunity to participate in office hours with Andreas, where he can discuss real-life scenarios and emerging technologies with someone as knowledgeable and experienced as Andreas. He considers this personalized attention and support to be truly invaluable and believes that it has made his subscription to the academy feel like an incredible investment in his professional development. Beyond that, the course material was very convincing to him.
“I have found the course material to be incredibly valuable - it is well curated and presented in a way that is easy to understand. As someone who comes from a different field, I sometimes struggle to grasp theoretical concepts despite having experience with practical applications. That being said, I even have found the theoretical courses to be very enjoyable and informative. Especially the section on data modeling has been a highlight for me, as Andreas provides key insights on how to think beyond the surface-level requirements and build data models that truly meet the needs of the organization.”
Equipped for the real life through practical examples
In the end, the courses helped Santiago to consolidate his knowledge and feel more confident in defending his ideas to clients. He found them particularly helpful in understanding how to design and implement pipeline architectures that meet business requirements. The practical examples and real-world scenarios covered in the training material made him better equipped to answer client questions and make informed decisions about how to best approach each unique situation.
Overall, Santiago is thrilled with the progress he has made through the training and highly recommends it to anyone looking to take their data engineering skills to the next level. The comprehensive curriculum, personalized coaching, and supportive community have truly exceeded his expectations.
Start your own journey
We hope you got inspired by Santiago's journey. Now the big question for you is: are you ready to start your very own Data Engineering success story? Then join our Learn Data Engineering Academy today!
From Data Science to Data Engineering - a Successful Journey
Ovo Okpubuluku is a Data Engineer living in the Calgary Area in Alberta, Canada. Before pivoting to the tech industry in 2020, he had worked in Oil and Gas as an Engineering Technologist and in Banking as a branch operations, customer service and transaction processing officer. He began his journey into data science in December 2019 and shifted into data engineering in early 2022.
Facing hurdles
When he started his data engineering journey, it was problematic for him to find profound Data Engineer training and courses. There was an uptick in data engineering job openings, but from his experience not many people were talking about how to start a career in this field. Although data engineering has the same, if not a higher amount of job openings and talent needs in the job market, for him it seemed to be not as hyped as data science.
“Frankly, it took me a while to come to the conclusion that Data Engineering was for me. I was stuck in my Data Sciencing ways for quite a bit. Also, my introduction to Data Engineering was not a very pleasant experience. This was due to the set of courses I took at first in a prior Data Science program and how they were delivered, as well as the complexity and huge learning curve of the Hadoop Ecosystem all coming from the Big Data era. Because of that experience, I became very apprehensive about learning Data Engineering tools, and steered away from that area.”
However, with the advent of the cloud, and learning more about cloud resources, Ovo quickly saw that people can become Data Engineers without having to learn and use the Big Data technologies. The cloud seemed to even up the playing ground.
The perfect fit
Back then in 2021, Ovo also came across Andreas Kretz’s content. Listening to Andreas’s YouTube videos, and reading through his LinkedIn posts or blog posts on Medium helped Ovo to get to the point of believing that he should learn data engineering skills. He also read the Data Engineering Cookbook, which was a very encouraging proposition for him to take on the challenge of skilling up in data engineering. And Andreas’s Learn Data Engineering Academy seemed to be the perfect place for Ovo. From all the training and courses out there, the Academy was the only one that was a good fit for Ovo’s schedule and skill level at the time.
“Signing up for the academy was a natural choice at that point. This is because I have grown to trust Andreas’s perspectives and experience in the field. Also, the Academy became affordable when I landed a job, and so I signed up for a couple of years to quickly learn the content. The other reason I like the Academy is that it is 100% flexible, not cohort based with live classes. This fits my schedule perfectly, and allows me to set a cadence to learn when it is most convenient. I also love the hands on projects section. That was a huge deciding factor in getting into the Academy. It turned out that my Data Science role was not really focused on Data Science tasks, and when I took on more Data Engineering and Cloud platform projects, I changed my title to Data Engineer, and decided to go all in with the Academy.”
Courses and projects helped landing a Data Engineering job
Ovo studied all the courses available at the time. He found that the Academy helped him with fundamental understanding of data engineering design and theory, as well as the basic knowledge of how to apply the various tools commonly used in the field. The Academy also provided a foundation to build on in even more complex project settings. Ovo particularly likes that he gets lifetime access to the content, and can refer to it with confidence whenever he has to learn any new technology from the ground up.
Ovo's expectations of the Academy were exceeded as he set out to study all the fundamental courses and get at least 2 projects into his portfolio by March 2023. After only two months of taking courses, Ovo began working on a data pipeline at work. This encouraged him to toss in some job applications between June and July of 2022, just to "test the waters". He was surprised when he got several interviews, three of which progressed to the final stages. He chose the best offer for a Data Engineer role in a GCP consulting company in Toronto, which he started in August 2022.
Start your own journey
We hope you got inspired by Ovo’s journey. Now the big question for you is: are you ready to start your very own Data Engineering success story? Then join our Learn Data Engineering Academy today!