The Data Incubator

I was a fellow during the summer of 2015 in DC. The Data Incubator helped me become a much more competitive applicant for jobs in the data science industry. By completing a collection of projects, I became much more proficient in the tools a data scientist... Read More needs to know and had multiple points to show off during job interviews. I also got to network with and befriend many other bright fellows who have since moved on to great jobs. I myself was hired at my current job through the Incubator, so it's hard to argue with results.

To those considering the incubator, you will definitely benefit from the experience, but be prepared to work ~12-14 hour days throughout most of the program. It's hard work, but it pays off.

I attended The Data Incubator with a very talented and highly motivated group of recent and soon to be PhDs in engineering, physics, math, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics. We spent our days working on challenging mini projects and evenings polishing... Read More the pitches for our capstone projects. In between we met employers at partner panels, happy hours, and pitch nights. I ended up taking a job from one of the hiring partners and am really glad that I was a fellow at TDI.

I was in the Spring 2015 cohort in NYC. I was very happy with the program. In two months, I was able to learn a ton, and ultimately land a job I am very happy with at Capital One Labs.

The most valuable thing I got out of The Data Incubator was the ability... Read More to meet people from industry through the partner panels and happy hours. For me this served two purposes. First, it was an extremely efficient way to do a lot of networking in a short amount of time, which greatly increases the chance of finding a job. It is much easier to initiate a dialogue with a hiring partner if you have already met someone from the company in person.

Second, I learned a lot about the landscape of the industry, which helped me figure out what I was looking for in a job. Over the course of the program, I was introduced to companies that weren’t on my radar and found myself very interested in them. Once you are in The Data Incubator program, there are too many partner companies on the list to be able to seriously pursue them all. You have to know what you are looking for in order to focus your efforts, and I definitely gained that focus over the course of the program.

I was a tenure-track scientist when I decided to move to a job as a data scientist in industry after I got frustrated with funding issues in academia. I was very happy with the Data Incubator course which met all my expectations an more. I was introduced... Read More to many concepts that I had just touched on in some online courses I had taken prior to the course. By having weekly mini projects, I was forced to understand the material more. Whilst there were lectures to accompany the mini-projects, in order to complete them I was forced to do some research on my own which was a valuable thing. We weren’t just fed the answers.

On top of this, as an online Fellow, I appreciated being split into small groups. In my case, this worked really well and I would encourage others in the same situation to use this to their advantage and hold regular meetings.

The course provides practical interview prep and works with a large number of companies which makes finding a job after the course that much easier. Often, as in the car of the company I ended up at, companies hire from the Data Incubator after hiring fellows from previous cohorts. This shows that the Data Incubator graduates are held in high esteem by the hiring companies which shows the strength of the course. I have no hesitation in recommending the Data Incubator to any aspiring data scientists.

The Data Incubator surrounded me with incredibly smart, motivated Fellows who all had similar goals and backgrounds. Being in that environment, and having the structure of the program and the demands of my project, were essential to my education.

A talented... Read More instructor is not supposed to implant information into your mind, but rather function as a tour guide in a difficult landscape of concepts of varying relevance. The Data Incubator team did an incredible job of emphasizing the most important and fundamental concepts that a data scientist needs to know in his career – I know, because all of these things were confirmed in my first week at my new job.

I want to be data scientist in the real world industry, rather than just being a theoretician in academia. I was looking for jobs after graduating from my PhD but I felt like my skill level was not sufficient for passing the interviews. Given my background... Read More in mathematics, not computer science. I also felt like I lacked the programming depth of other candidates and did not have a strong grasp of machine-learning algorithms. While I wanted to learn this on my own, I didn’t really know where to start and just couldn’t quite get myself motivated.

I signed up for The Data Incubator because I needed a structured course and peer group that would make learning this material fun. I loved the fun, collaborative work environment that the team has created at The Data Incubator. I learned so much in a short amount of time. In addition to learning about machine-learning, programming, map-reduce, spark and so much more. They also helped me land a great data science job paying six figures.

I would highly recommend anyone who wants to move into industry from academia apply for The Data Incubator! It was a life-changing experience.

I was a fellow at The Data Incubator's NYC campus and absolutely loved it. Everyday at TDI followed a similar schedule. We did lectures in the mornings, followed by intensive project-based group work in the afternoon. After a few weeks we went through... Read More the basics of statistics, good programming practices, machine learning, spark, map-reduce, interview prep and much more ... The instructors were exceptional and world class -- leading industry practitioners with a wealth of knowledge that definitely shown through in their lectures. They could pretty much answer any question we could think of and gave us a new way of thinking about data science. The team really helped me land a great job! Finally, I really loved my cohort. These were some of the smartest people I've ever met!

I was able to find work before the program ended and am now working as a Data Scientist making a (generous) 6-figure salary doing what I love!