Megan Lieu

I was rejected by my dream company 5 times, and on my 6th try…

I was the one who rejected them.

During this 6th time around, I got my interview via a referral.

At the time, I already hand an offer in hand, but took the interview anyway because this was the “dream company” I’ve had since 2018.

Every year since then, I had gotten closer and closer to the end of their 7-round interview processes—no dice every time.

But this time around, during the recruiter screen, I knew deep down that this role was NOT the right fit.

At the end of the call during salary range discussions, I told the recruiter the salary my current offer was giving me.

And he responded “That much? For the DC area??…To be honest our range doesn’t even come close.”

So we pretty much ended the conversation right then and there. No “we’ll stay in touch” pleasantries exchanged 😅

And with that, I knew I finally outgrew my “dream company.”

Career plans change and people grow—ditch the “dream” and embrace every twist and turn in your journey ahead.

I’m 26 years old and this will be my first time (besides college) not living under my parent’s roof 🥳

But I remember when “still living with my parents” was such an embarrassing thing for me to admit 😔

After college, most of my friends moved away to work in big cities, while I stayed at home with my family in the suburbs. Every time I caught up with friends who asked what I was up to, I’d quickly mumble “I’m still living at home with my parents,” and swiftly change the topic.

Deep down, this made me feel like I was never a “real adult.” It wasn’t until recently that I realized many other twenty-somethings have had to stay or move back in with their families for one reason or another.

For me, having grown up in a frugal Asian household where a nuclear family is the norm, I was always asked “What’s the rush? Stay home and save money.” This became especially sound advice though during the pandemic, and then afterward when home prices skyrocketed 🚀

The Washington, DC area is EXPENSIVE. At the end of 2021 I scraped Zillow data for available homes in Northern Virginia (link to post in comments below) and found out the average price for 3 bedroom+ townhomes and single family was $1.1m 🙃

So finally in early February of this year, after months of house hunting and days before the Fed’s first rate hike announcements, I signed on my home for $650k, aka the cheapest you’d be able to find any new construction in this area 😳

Had I rushed the process, I would not have found the right home for me. Had I followed anyone else’s timeline but my own, I would not have been ready to start this next chapter of “adulting” 🎉

Thank you to Kathy Tran K. and Ryan Homes for making this all possible 🙏


#newhomes #homeownership #adulting

POV: you know at least some SQL and now it’s your time to shine 🤩

Also do you consider SQL a programming language? 🤔

We don't talk enough about the grief of leaving a toxic job.

We often think getting out of workplaces will lead to relief, but we forget that those workplaces leave long-lasting trauma.

The trauma of trying to survive in places not meant for us
The trauma of promises that were never delivered
The trauma of leaving good coworkers behind The trauma of reconciling the good memories
The trauma of damaged mental health
The trauma of *what could have been*

If you find yourself out of a job because you chose self-respect over enduring an unbearable situation, your grief is just as valid as those who lost their positions due to layoffs or firings.

Because moving on requires not only getting out of, but also getting *over* the toxic environment that once convinced us we didn't deserve better.

♻️ Reshare this if it resonates with you

When I decided I wanted to pivot into data a year ago, I knew no one in the field

I truly thought the ONLY ways to break in were:
A. Have gone/go back to school for it and/or
B. Have family/close friends who work in it

Well I had neither, so I knew I had to get out there and have conversations with ~real people~ even though the thought of it PETRIFIED me. I started:

✅ Commenting on posts from people I found in the LinkedIn data community (instead of just lurking) 💭
✅ Having coffee chats with data professionals to learn how they did it (this terrified me so much!) ☕️
✅ Posting consistently on LinkedIn about my learnings and struggles (this terrified me even more!!) 📈
✅✅ Bonus: I once chatted up a complete stranger in the grocery store because he was wearing a data science shirt (shout out to Farhan Kanani for not being freaked out) 😅

I can’t express enough how UNNATURAL it felt for my introverted self to talk to strangers and do this ~networking~ thing. But as with anything, it became less unnatural with practice, and slowly I started actually enjoying learning from and meeting new people!

2 new jobs, a handful of new friendships and mentorships, and a community of 16,000+ later, it still scares me to meet new people, but I can now confidently say

Your network is your net worth, and it’s SO worth it to overcome your fears 👏


#networking #careers #data

The biggest disappointment I had when I finally became a data scientist

Was learning that it’s not just heads-down work all day

“I can’t wait to not talk to anyone, build models and just do technical data science-y things by myself all the time!”

Much to my introverted horror, I realized I not only had to collaborate with, but also actually TALK to business and external stakeholders everyday

But over the course of the past year of being a data scientist, overcoming this irrational fear has surprisingly been the most rewarding area of growth for me

Once I embraced “heads-up”, collaborative work as not only part of my job, but also an advantage of my role that enables me to create outputs aligned with end users’ business goals, this mindset shift actually made my job EASIER

A year later, I still consider this one of my biggest areas for growth, I still need to schedule weekly “No Meetings” work blocks on my calendar, and I still get nervous before customer meetings. But being an introvert is no longer my crutch.


#careers #datascience #data

I was rejected by my dream company 5 times, and on my 6th try…

I was the one who rejected them.

During this 6th time around, I already had another offer, but took the interview anyway because this was my dream company since 2018.

Every year since then, I had gotten closer and closer to the end of their 7-round interview processes—no dice every time.

But this time around, during the recruiter screen, I knew deep down that this role was NOT the right fit.

At the end of the call during salary range discussions, I told the recruiter the salary my current offer was giving me.

And he said “That much? For the DC area??…To be honest our range doesn’t even come close.”

So we pretty much ended the conversation right then and there--no “we’ll stay in touch” pleasantries exchanged 😅

And with that, I knew I finally outgrew my “dream company.”

Career plans change and people grow—ditch the “dream” and embrace every twist and turn in your journey ahead.

To replace data analysts and data scientists with AI, stakeholders would need to accurately describe what they want.

That ain’t happening in 2024 or any time soon, so we’re safe y’all 😌

Another cool SQL trick that blew my mind when I found out it existed: Lateral column alias referencing! 🤩

I’m sure most SQL users have experienced the frustrating error message “Invalid column name…” after you’ve created an aliased column in your SELECT statement, then try to reuse that alias elsewhere in your query 😖

Normally, the only place you CAN safely reference an alias in the same query is in your ORDER BY clause, since that’s one of the few clauses evaluated after SELECT in SQL’s logical processing order. So your solutions are CTEs, subqueries, or typing out the entire column definition again 👎

Enter lateral alias referencing, which allows you to reuse an alias within a query as soon as it’s declared, meaning you don’t have to repeat the expression from your SELECT clause! 🙌

When I first realized this functionality existed (only in Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery and Teradata to my knowledge) I remember thinking “Why don’t all SQL flavors support this? This is life changing!” 🤯

But of course, the reason standard SQL makes you jump through hoops to use your aliases is to avoid ambiguity, so please keep this in mind if you ever use this feature ⚠️

In the following example, we’ll look at all salesmen who have sold at least an average of $500, rounded to the nearest dollar, worth of products for any product category in our orders table

Have you ever tried referencing your aliases laterally??


#SQL #coding #datascience

The lowest I ever felt was when I made my highest salary.

Throughout my career, the driving factor behind a lot of my moves has been the money.

So much so that it caused me to overlook not only red flags in my employers, but also red flags in how I was feeling.

It took me making the highest salary I’ve ever had to realize that none of the money was worth it if:

❌ I couldn’t sleep at nights from the anxiety
❌ I was not doing work that fulfilled me
❌ I was not given support in my role
❌ I had no work-life balance at all

So when I left it all behind and finally started choosing myself, here’s what I’ve learned is worth way more in a job than any salary or title:

✅ Feeling invested in
✅ Feeling supported
✅ Feeling trusted
✅ Feeling valued

I’ll take a lower paying job with all of these things over a higher paying job without them any day.

How about you?

Picture credit: Janis Ozolins