Grateful For You For My Past 2 Years

Hi Reader, here’s what I’m reflecting on today as I finish the 2nd year of running my own business and now starting year 3.

“ Thank you for your encouragement and faith in me! — Jimmy

29 years ago I finished my masters degree at Stanford and started my corporate role in Silicon Valley, building web-based data tools for people and automating business processes. Two of my favorite Stanford courses were robotics and entrepreneurship, both helpful to drive innovation using automated systems. With dabbling in some consulting to build media and e-commerce platforms for startups along the way, my career path led me to the LinkedIn data science team where I stayed for 12 years.

2 years ago I resigned from LinkedIn on a Friday afternoon and said goodbye to all the folks there for the last time. Monday morning, I booted up my computer in my home office, grabbed my new web domain when it fortuitously became available for purchase at 8 am, and then moved forward to form my LLC for Jimmy v2.0.

18 months ago I spoke as a keynote speaker for the Expedia AI group, then started with my first paid data leadership coaching client, followed by launching Cohort 1 of the Data Leaders Community of Practice. I repurposed my Expedia talk into my online class that you can take.

12 months ago I was invited to discuss with the UCLA faculty about how to prepare business analytics students for new roles in the face of current changes sweeping the business landscape with downsizing, flattening orgs, and the rise of AI. I also published my first article on Towards Data Science and launched Cohort 2 of the Data Leaders Community of Practice.

6 months ago I spoke as a keynote speaker at a high school in the heart of Silicon Valley providing guidance on how they can start now to future-proof their careers in science, tech, engineering, arts, and math. I also expanded my business to take on a small business client, which I’ve been helping develop their data strategy and implementation almost full-time for the last 6 months.

3 months ago I taught a class for the biostatistics leadership program at UC San Diego, on the topic of how to future-proof their careers in biostatistics.

1 month ago I read depressing headlines about Meta laying off 3,600 workers for another intense year, Workday cutting 1,750 jobs in AI push, Salesforce to cut 1,000 roles as it prepares to sell AI products, Google to cut HR jobs while investing in AI infrastructure, and Autodesk to cut 1,350 employees to switch to self-service sales enablement. Career paths today clearly need to be nimble and agile among these landscape changes!

Today I’m reflecting on the past 2 years since I voluntarily left my corporate job.

Many of my former coworkers told me that it was a good choice for me to leave at the time that I did. Many, if not most, of my immediate coworkers had subsequently been laid off or also resigned, but soon got similar jobs elsewhere. However, they now again face layoffs in their new companies, but hopefully now better prepared for the churn.

Several others told me that they committed to getting more education, which I fully support and greatly admire what they’re doing.

In any case, I truly appreciate the opportunities I've had to learn and apply hands-on in the past 2 years of my career path choice, including mistakes and all.

I'm grateful for you and others. In light of the uncertainty in the business landscape, I’m very grateful for the various people who have partnered with me in the past two years, or encouraged me, or taken a risk on me.

Besides my family, these awesome people include Hojeong, cohort 1, cohort 2, Shiyi, Larry, Ganesh, Helen, Arthur, Susan, Anil, Chito, David, Peter, Vineet, Al, Ray, Chris, Garvin, Yuanying, Fangfang, Simon, Franklin, John, Sofus, Manasi, Li, Cloris, Sidd, Missy, Dawn, and many others whom I apologize for not listing--including many of you as readers who stuck with me from the beginning. 😀

I'm here to help. As I’m taking on a major business client almost full-time, I haven’t been able to spend as much time as before to write online articles regularly or stay on social media.

However, I do continue to make some time available for people for either individual coaching or through our Data Leaders Community of Practice cohort coaching.

It made me very happy to hear a recent cohort coaching client give praise that “this was like a mini-MBA for data scientists.” It means that I’m doing my job to prepare people to grow their leadership skills to future-proof their careers.

I'll continue to help people this way for as long as I have energy to give.

Want to chat? See if I can help you with something? Could be related to AI or data science or launching your own business or something else as well. Book time with me to explain your situation and explore how I can help, or just simply to chat to catch up.

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Jimmy Wong Coach, speaker, and entrepreneur enabling people to thrive in the age of AI. Data science leader with 12 years experience at the LinkedIn company and 27 years in the industry. Visit aijimmy.com​ ​​​​​​

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