SDS PODCAST EPISODE 20 WITH ILYA EREMENKO · to say. The first one being business theory, such as management, marketing, advanced management theories. The second one is business practical,

Show Notes: http://www.superdatascience.com/20 1

SDS PODCAST EPISODE 20

WITH ILYA EREMENKO


Kirill: This is episode number 20, with my brother, Ilya Eremenko.

(background music plays)

Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, data science coach and lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today and now let’s make the complex simple.


Hello and welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. Super excited to have you on board today, and we have got a very interesting guest today. I decided to invite one of my brothers onto the show. Today we've got Ilya Eremenko. So why did I invite my brother onto the show? Well, first of all, he's studying at university, and he's studying a degree in the spaces of IT and Business, so he's got some very interesting insights, and he shared them, about how he sees his career in the coming years, and maybe even decades, and what he sees of the world, but also I think that his views are very interesting because he is a representative of generation Z. So he is still only 20 years old, so he was born in 1996, and basically his views on data, on technology, on where the world's going, are very, very different to mine, for instance, or maybe even to yours, and the way he perceives the world, and the way this generation perceives the world, is very interesting, it's very interesting to hear about and learn.

I think we had a great conversation about that, and so just that you're prepared for what to expect in the podcast, I'm going to give a quick overview of the terms that we use in terms of generations inside this podcast, and terms that


you'll hear all around. So we'll start with "Baby Boomers". So Baby Boomers are people who were born right after the Second World War, that's 1946 to 1954. Then you've got "Boomers 2", or "Generation Jones", which is not that heard of, it's 1955 to 1965. Then we've got the ones that you've probably heard more of. So "Generation X" is 1966 to 1976. "Generation Y", or they're also called the "Echo Boomers," or they're called the "Millennials", that's 1977 to 1994, for instance I'm in the Generation Y. And also, you've got after that the final, or the most recent, generation, "Generation Z", which is 1995 to 2012.

So the dates are not exactly precise, and some sources will tell you different dates, but that's what we're going to stick to and use as a guiding principle. So Ilya's a representative of Generation Z, and that is fully people who had easy access to the internet while they were at school and had all this technology around them, and were using iPads at an early age. And as you can imagine, their opinions on where the world's going is very different.

So that's what you'll learn in this podcast. And on top of all of that, Ilya and I have a very special surprise for you. Just recently, we finished recording a course on SQL and Database Design. This is a massive course which contains over 12 hours of content. And it not only teaches you SQL, it actually teaches you SQL in two versions. It teaches you a ProsgreSQL and Microsoft Server SQL, but that's not all. In this course, we also talk about something that normally courses about SQL don't teach you. We talk about database design. So I specifically added a few sections which discuss how databases are structured. So we talk about things like schemas, we talk about normalization of databases, so 1NF,


2NF, 3NF, so those are the first, second, and third normal forms of databases, how to bring your databases into normal forms and why that is required, what the difference is between OLTP databases and OLAP databases, and lots more stuff. So all of the things that are so crucial in the success of a data scientist's career.

And the surprise is basically if you haven't yet signed up to this course – so we had an early bird launch for this course recently, when it was launched, like a month ago or so – so if you didn't get a chance to sign up to this course, then just because you're listening to this podcast, just because we want to inspire you to learn more, we've added a special coupon on the page of this podcast, on the show notes page, and if you do still want to sign up to SQL and you missed that first opportunity to sign up, then this is your window to sign up. The coupon will be available until the end of Sunday, and that's our little surprise for you just in case you do want to learn a bit more about SQL and Database Design. So if you want to join into that course, then head on over to www.superdatascience.com/20 and you'll see the link there.

And on that note, that's enough for the intro, without further ado, I bring to you Ilya Eremenko.


Welcome everybody to the SuperDataScience podcast. Today I’ve got a very, very special guest with me, it's my brother, Ilya Eremenko, who's calling in from Brisbane. We both live in the same city. Ilya, how are you going today?


Ilya: Hello Kirill, I'm doing very well today, thank you very much. The weather is nice, the day is nice, the future looks promising. How are you?

Kirill: I'm good, thanks bro! So everybody, I decided to bring Ilya onto the show because Ilya is also in the space of data, he's currently studying a degree, and we'll talk about that, which is a mix of business and data, it's very interesting. And at the same time, I also thought that it would be great opportunity for us to interact or get an opinion of somebody who is in that generation, you know, Generation Y, or actually Ilya's in the Generation Z, so still very young and very adept with technology. So I think it'll be a great conversation. So Ilya, are you excited about this?

Ilya: Yeah, yeah, sure, let's do it.

Kirill: Alright, let's do it. Ok, so first of all, how old are you, Ilya?

Ilya: I'm 20 years old.

Kirill: 20 years old. And what are you doing currently in your life?

Ilya: I'm studying at Queensland University of Technology and trying to produce different courses on Udemy.

Kirill: Yeah, awesome. We'll get to the Udemy courses. So by the way, guys, Ilya and I released a course on databases and SQL earlier, just a few weeks ago, and we'll get to that in a second, but for now, Ilya, tell us a bit more about what are you studying at Queensland University of Technology?

Ilya: I'm studying Diploma of Corporate Business Analysis. Basically, it's a mix of business subjects and IT subjects. The best part about this course is that it's mostly the foundation to both the business world and the IT world, and as we know today, there is no difference between them. They


have to work together. If you want your business to be successful, you need to implement IT into it. So it gave me a lot of insight to what is important in business from the IT perspective, and what's important in IT from a business perspective. And I think that's very valuable because a lot of people don't have that opportunity and they just go blindly into the corporate world hoping that their diploma will teach them all the necessary skills without having the vision of the world itself first.

Kirill: OK, that's a pretty interesting concept. And I like that you mentioned that right now, pretty much every business, like I can't even think of a business that doesn't require IT, like doesn't have a website or a database, or some sort of IT system. And so, give us a bit of an overview of the subjects that you're taking in this course.

Ilya: My subjects are mostly divided into 3 categories, I would like to say. The first one being business theory, such as management, marketing, advanced management theories. The second one is business practical, such as business process modelling, which I have a lot of subjects on. It's basically putting a business process down to a model using a specific set of constraints and elements. And it just lets you see the big picture on a very clear and logical format. And my third part of the subject is IT. And IT is mostly practical, I only had one theoretical subject so far, just because people like to put practice into IT nowadays to get you a bit more experience.

Kirill: OK, yeah, that's very interesting. And with IT, I know you have a subject on databases. What other IT exposure did you get in your degree?


Ilya: Well, as always, you start off by learning PASCAL. Then we moved on to learn some C#. And then we dived into more conceptual stuff, still supported by a large amount of theory. The most notable theories that I can tell you are TAM, Cycles of Development, User Acceptance Cycle, and, of course, Moore's Law and other different laws that predict how IT will progress throughout the years.

Kirill: Alright, OK. So that's quite an involved degree, mixing both business and IT. I've got two questions. The first one is, what made you choose this degree? How did you decide that this is something that's good for your future?

Ilya: Well, to be honest, I wasn’t sure about any degree and I really didn’t have any idea what I wanted to be. I took some IT classes in school and I took pretty much every other subject in school. And I didn’t feel right about anything, so when it came to choosing the degree I thought it would be best to choose a very large, a very broad degree that has a lot of subjects in it and that has a lot of different professions covered in it, so while studying, you can understand more what exactly do you want to do. And so far I’m very happy about the choice, because the first year of university just flew by and you really don’t understand how different the real world is to your high school world when you’re just coming to university because there is a big shift you need to do. And I’m very happy that I took this degree again, because now I understand that I want to do something with business IT. I basically want to keep working in this field. I don’t know about my specialization yet. I might do that later but so far it works out pretty good.

Kirill: That’s awesome. That was actually my second question then. Are you happy with your choice or not? It seems like


you feel that you’re on the right track. And I like the option—for any listeners out there, especially those who are just considering a degree or considering continuing their education and getting another degree, I think that’s a good concept of selecting something that is quite broad but it’s in your area of interest, but it’s broad enough so that you have flexibility to later on – not change your mind – but actually just choose more specifically what you want. Because if you jump into something too specific, because I was first interested in physics, and if I were to start a degree in laser physics right away, I would never get the exposure to other areas of physics. Same thing here. So if you get the exposure to a little bit of everything then it gives you time to understand what exactly you like. Is that a good summary of the concept you conveyed just now, Ilya?

Ilya: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The only thing I wanted to add to that is that the world is shifting right now, and you don’t really need that much specialization from university in the sense that any skill that university will teach you, you can go online and learn it for free or for much less amount of money. And this gives you the flexibility that not only you can get exposed to more concepts in university, where they just prepare you for the real world in your final year or just before you finish it. You can go online and research the particular skills you need in the order you want to the level of expertise you want and then you’ll be ready for your dream job at any time.

Kirill: Fantastic. That’s great advice. And that actually prompts a very interesting debate or question that a lot of people are pondering right now, and I’d like to get your opinion on it as the Generation Z, as the most technology-savvy people on


the planet. Why are degrees even necessary? As you correctly mentioned, you can go online and get any skill. You can get any expertise you want, and for less money, and also probably for less time, because you can do it in your own time as quickly or as slowly as you want. So why is it still necessary? Why would somebody want to go to university when they can get all this knowledge online? What’s your view on that?

Ilya: Well, firstly, the world is advancing but not just as fast as we would like it to. And secondly, there are some areas that just do not allow that. For example, if you’re going into engineering or any medicine field, you will be responsible for the lives of real people. So, you can’t just get that level of knowledge and that level of evaluation on the Internet. You have to go to the university where they have a planned program, a government approved program, that will teach you all the necessary skills so you will never make anything wrong and lose human lives.

But about any other subjects that do not work so closely with human lives, I think it’s just a matter of time. Because we see that more and more start-ups pop up and more traditional businesses, more conservative businesses, they either adjust to that or they fall down. And this will spike into the fact that more and more companies will start accepting you not based on your degree, but based on your actual skills. The evaluation processes, the training programs that they will have themselves will become better and they will be able to afford that. Because for now I still feel that for most companies, a degree is just a certification that you can do stuff and that you are determined to do stuff


for a long period of time. But I think that’s really fading out in business field and IT field specifically.

Kirill: Okay. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yeah, I also think that’s where the world is going and with time companies are going to realize more and more that they need the people with the skills regardless of what’s said on their paper or even if they have that paper. But you’re probably right. We’re probably not there yet. Another interesting thing I would like to get your thoughts on is, you said there’s a lot of start-ups popping up and there’s lots of different companies changing the way they do business or older companies collapsing and newer companies popping up and adapting to the market and so on. From what you have seen, and I’m guessing you are very up-to-date with all the technology trends, being a post-millennial and always being on social media and everything, in the space of data, or basically any business because any business uses data right now—so, in the space of organizations and thinking about your future employment, what companies attract you the most? What companies make you excited and where would you want to work? What kind of things they do attract you the most?

Ilya: Well, that’s a very interesting question because I haven’t done any extensive research as of yet on any companies, so I can only judge what I hear on social media or what I see in the news. And for me, of course, the most attractive companies are companies like Microsoft, companies like Tesla, companies like SpaceX or any companies that are on the frontier of advancing forward. Because it’s not about the money when you’re working, it’s all about making a difference. Because I think that there’s hundreds of ways to make money other than your job. You can invest it, you can


get a second job, you can create content online, you can have your own YouTube channel. But I think your work, your primary work, the stuff that you put the most amount of time in, it has to matter. It has to do something good for humanity, for yourself, for your neighbours, for your family. And I think those companies on the frontier that do not just sit on what they’ve created and they’re always looking for more, they certainly attract me the most.

Kirill: Fantastic. That’s some very good insights. So, if there’s any executives, which I’m sure there are, or managers listening to this, and you’re looking to eventually get some of these Generation Z or post-millennials into your company, that’s what they’re looking for. They’re looking for companies that are changing the world. Ilya, what personally excites you the most? Like, what part of changing the world? Is it medicine or is it—like, Microsoft is in the space of IT and is enabling companies to do things on computers and so on—or is it like cars and rockets? If you really know, what exactly excites you the most personally?

Ilya: For me, I would say that the world is not the same without IT. IT is basically the engine of the world right now, and any company that puts its money, its value, its manpower into IT will certainly attract me the most. Because even if you look at the medicine field, there’s no more bones to be discovered, there’s no more organs to be found. It’s mostly about treating the known diseases or preparing for the known diseases in a different way, in a more advanced way. We already can see a lot of robots being inserted into humans to clear blood, to deliver medicine directly to the organs that need it. And we actually see robot surgeons that do better than human surgeons. So if we take any other field, we can


already see that business is already completely under IT. Construction, engineers, all of them use IT programs to develop a piece of building to see will it fall or not. So, IT is definitely the biggest drive of our generation of this century for humanity. So, personally, I certainly would want to go somewhere where they deal with IT.

Kirill: Okay, fantastic. And on that note, you earlier mentioned a concept of Internet of Things or IoT. I’d really like to get your thoughts on that. Like, what is the Internet of Things to you as a post-millennial?

Ilya: What is Internet of Things for me?

Kirill: Yeah.

Ilya: Do you mean what I daily interfere with?

Kirill: No, just like how do you understand the way that the world is hyper-connected and all of these things combined together create the Internet of Things?

Ilya: Oh, well, the Internet of Things is basically the Internet of our everyday life. We can already see that cars get your geolocation all the time. They track it and then they send it online to update the maps, the world maps to make them better, to update the safety regulations and to even specify your route to your preferences. We can also see that in every other part of our daily life. The phones are basically devices that we voluntarily put in all the data we want, all the data we have and they just send it to all the other devices, all the other companies that can buy it or need it. We have smart scales, we have smart rooms, we have Apple TV, we have Amazon Echo, we have all these products that are made for listening to our needs and adjusting to them accordingly.


And that just comes to the big question that growing up as a millennial in Russia, I had to deal with a lot of older people and the privacy to them, the safety of their secrets and the safety of their preferences was so high that they will never tell you what they like or what they don’t like. Because they’re still afraid that in some way it might be hurtful to them, that you can use it against them. And for my generation, for my friends, we just voluntarily give this data and give our secrets, give our favourite foods and places to everybody. We freely post it on social media without wanting anything back. So I think the Internet of Things will greatly benefit from that because when you can predict the user’s next move, you can always satisfy him and that what the consumers or customers look for – satisfaction. So the Internet of Things is a very big deal that’s basically infiltrated pretty much every part of our life.

Kirill: Fantastic. That’s exactly the answer that I was hoping for, the comparison between what the previous generations think of it and what you guys think of it. Because like even for me, giving up some of my information – yeah, that’s totally fine. But when every single step of my life is tracked or every single search term that I use, everything is constantly being analysed and then predictions are made what I’m interested in, you know, I still think of it in a way as somebody’s watching over me. Whereas from what you said, for you it’s completely a no brainer. You get better service; you’re going to give up that information. It’s a fair trade-off. So do you think that is a good way where the world is going, or it has some negative aspects in your view as well?


Ilya: I think it certainly is changing the world, and I can’t tell you if it’s good or bad. I think the most heard quote that I know is “The day we’ll sacrifice our freedom is the day America will fall.” I think it was said by Lincoln. And that’s the argument a lot of people say against sharing our data, against apps infiltrating into our daily lives and collecting all the data. But I also think that without you letting your phone know what time you need to wake up, what route you take to work every day, you will just not get the same way of life. You will not get all the benefits that other people get. You will not get a daily reminder that you need to do such and such or that you need to go there and it will take you so long to go there or that you need to run another two kilometres to be healthy. And I think it’s a very sketchy road in a sense that right now we’re only in the beginning of it and it almost completely depends on the companies, what they’re going to do with this data. Are they going to be aggressive and start using it to their advantage more than to users’ advantage? Then we’ll definitely see a lot of drawbacks of this change. And if they just keep doing what they’re doing now, collecting the data, selling it to other marketing tools that then customize our ads so we see what we want to see and we buy what we want to buy, I think it’s a very good trade-off. We get all these benefits, we get all this efficiency, and we lose pretty much nothing.

Kirill: Yeah. That’s very profound and thank you for sharing that view. Everybody has their own opinion about it, so a lot of our listeners will find your view either aligned with theirs or controversial, and it’s always thought-provoking. So thanks a lot for that. And what I wanted to talk about next is—like, the way you’ve set up your life so far. I know you’re at the early stages, you’re still at Uni, but you’ve already


accomplished quite a lot. So, you’re studying a degree in Australia at one of the leading universities here and at the same time, you have really started your own online presence, your own online business. So, for the listeners that are not aware yet, Ilya teaches a few courses on Udemy. Actually, I’ll let you talk about it. So tell us about your business. Tell us about the courses that you teach.

Ilya: Oh, well, there is really nothing to talk about yet. These courses were not designed to make money. They were not designed to even make a change in people’s life to be the next big thing. When I was creating these courses it was mostly about proving to myself that I can do it. And I’ve learned that by teaching others to do something, you learn it twice as good. So, that’s a very good thing with creating the courses, is that you can go ahead, practice your own skills, master them and then learn them at the best stage in the best possible way to be able to teach other people.

So, the courses I’ve created so far are about BPMN – Business Process Model and Notation. That’s the first course I’ve ever created and it’s exactly about business process modelling, where you take an existing business process and you put it on a sort of a map where you lie down all the important tasks and all the important gateways and then it’s just a very logical flow that you can go through start of the process to the end.

The second one was just a quick one about SWOT analysis, because that’s a very big question for people who don’t know anything about business and because SWOT analysis is one of the most commonly used tools in the business because it just gives you a lot of insight with pretty much no input.


And now with the final course, the last course that I made to date, that we actually made is, about SQL. Because as much as you don’t want to admit it, data is in every part of our life, and it’s important to know how to deal with this data and it’s important to know how this data is being dealt with by other people, by companies, by creators just so you understand how the world works and can adjust to it accordingly.

Kirill: Yeah, that’s a very important point. And it is true we just released this course on SQL. And I personally found it a lot of fun working together with you on this course, and we had some really good moments. As always, it’s challenging. You know, you have your ups and downs, especially releasing a course of that size with close to 10 hours of content, if not more. So, yeah, SQL – let’s talk more about that. For our listeners, can you explain what kind of tools did we choose to convey in that course, and why did we choose these tools?

Ilya: Well, there are basically four most commonly used tools for SQL: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. And we did some research. In Uni I learned MySQL. And it was quite fun and it was quite easy to use, but after doing some research, the biggest user consumer markets are PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server, so I definitely wanted to go for them first because it’s just good to have a big amount of people to talk to, to tell stuff to, and I really enjoy that. And about the tools themselves, I think that PostgreSQL has a lot of interesting parts in it because it doesn’t have as much functionality as Microsoft SQL Server and it’s not as fast, but it has some very specific functions that you don’t see anywhere else in any of the other software out there and it just allows you to work with database in a


very specific way. So, I think that if you have a choice between mastering PostgreSQL and mastering SQL Server, if you’re going to be working a lot with databases on a daily basis you want to go for SQL Server just because of its functionality, of its speed and just how easy it is to use, how user intuitive it is. But if you’re only going to be working with database very rarely, but it’s going to be a very big database, and it’s going to be a pretty difficult one, if you can say that, I think you’re better of going for PostgreSQL. Because it will certainly be easier to program a larger database and to work with it later on.

Kirill: Yeah, that’s certainly true. And I think I’ll add to that that PostgreSQL is really picking up in the start-up world because it’s free, it doesn’t require any—you don’t have to purchase a software license for it, so you can just go ahead, download it and start-ups can use it with minimal cost and also it’s available both on Windows and Mac and on Linux, on most major platforms, so it’s very versatile. It’s designed by people for people and that’s why it’s so cool.

As Ilya said, it has a huge user community, and same thing with Microsoft. Microsoft has a huge user community, although it’s not free, but you get all the support and Microsoft actually sends representatives out there into the Internet to help out people, to promote their software. So if you are working in a large corporation which already uses a tool like Microsoft SQL Server, then obviously learning that is a great advantage because you’ll know it better plus it’s a huge tool that is used by lots of corporations. Okay, so that was a little bit of an insight into SQL and the different types of SQL. So, tell us a bit more about why would somebody


want to learn SQL if they don’t necessarily work with databases in their day-to-day roles?

Ilya: Well, you can’t really not work with databases in your day-to-day life because databases are everywhere. If you work in any big corporation, or even in a small company, you will still have a database of the employees, of the payrolls, of all the money coming in and coming out, and all the tasks that need to be done. Even if you’re not working with it directly, it’s still there and it’s still being very useful and gathering a lot of important information. So, I think, even if you don’t necessarily work with databases directly, it’s still a very useful skill to know because if you ever try to design an app or a website or any program, you will need to work with databases.

So if you’re in the IT field and you ever think about any programming, you will have to deal with them at some point. And if you’re just working mostly with business side you’ll still want to learn it because it just lets you—databases, as well as working with any other programming stuff is very logical. It’s very direct. If you do everything correctly, your program will run. If you do everything incorrectly, nothing will run. And I think that teaches you a very important lesson. It teaches you to value the data and think about it in a different way. For example, before learning SQL, I never thought in Uni how am I being tracked down, how different subjects are comprised and why they have these names, these ID numbers and so on. And now I understand that.

And I understand that we live in a very heavily data-polluted world. There is a lot of unnecessary, unneeded or duplicated data all around us every day. And by being able to see the information that you actually need to see and being able to


pick it up from all of this mass of data, I think it’s the most important skill that you can get in business. Because just getting that one insightful data point can mean so much to you. You can get great results from it. That can be the difference between selling the product or failing as a company. So I think learning databases is definitely a good idea for anybody interested in improving their understanding of the world, and especially the corporate world.

Kirill: Yeah, gotcha. I totally agree with that. And I can attest to that as well. When I learned SQL for the first time, it was like a threshold concept for me. I completely changed my view on data, completely changed my view on how data works—all this data around me, like you said, the name of your course subjects and the IDs that students get and so on. It completely all started making sense. When you think of it in a database perspective, a lot of things around you make sense and as you correctly pointed out, you’re much more open to seeing these data points that might make it or break it in a certain type of analysis. So yeah, it’s a very useful and powerful skill to have to understand how databases work even if you’re not dealing with them on a day-to-day basis.

Alright, so that was pretty cool to learn about databases and SQL. And now I’d like to move on to some other topics I’d like to get your thoughts on while we have you here on the podcast. So the first one is you said you’re teaching because you want to learn, not necessarily because you want to make money or because you feel that you can make a change in a person’s life, like make a huge difference, but because you want to learn something yourself better.


But at the same time, if somebody was to open your course, he would see that you are getting feedback, people are taking your courses, you have several thousand students and people are getting value from your content and you are changing people’s lives. And I wanted to get your view on how does that feel. So how does it feel at such an early age to actually already help people improve their careers, help people learn new skills that they’ve been looking for? Does that scare you or does that make you do more of this and help the world even further?

Ilya: I think it’s a mix of both. Because on one hand it’s definitely scary in the sense that if I teach them anything wrong, if I say something wrong and they take it without doubting me and they use that information later on in their life, it can lead to trouble for them. And it’s definitely scary that I have people messaging me who are working for several years, maybe even several decades in the industry, and they’re messaging me asking some questions about such a simple subject to me, and they are asking questions hoping to get answers. And that’s definitely scary in the sense that I don’t think it was possible a hundred years ago for you to have more insight into anything without you having to spend years and years working in that specific field. And today there’s just so much information, so many different types of software, so much stuff to do in the world that people can only choose certain things.

So, if I learned BPMN and other people haven’t, I can teach them how to do that. And from this point of view, that’s definitely empowering. It’s definitely inspirational that I can do it, that I actually have — as you mentioned — several


thousand students who hopefully learned something from me and who improved their life quality just a tiny bit.

I just don’t have words talking about it because I never really think about it to not give in to the fear. Because even with this course, the latest course, I always have this thought in the back of my head that “What if I do something wrong? What if I make a mistake? What if this course is not as good as the courses before or what if people don’t like it?” And all of these questions build up over time and you just can’t answer them because the only thing you need to do is you need to power through, make something happen, do the thing you need to do and then look at it from the other side. And I think that’s a very important lesson that creating these courses in Udemy taught me, because so far in university, high school and any other jobs I got or any other gigs I did, they were all about working with a small amount of people or with nobody at all. They were either working with me, my team or a small amount of random people. Now it’s about going on the Internet, going to the world and doing different stuff. So it’s very interesting, and definitely to a certain degree life changing, I would even say.

Kirill: Fantastic. That’s some great insights. Yeah, I just want to re-encourage you and congratulate you on choosing to stand up to this fear and actually helping people, because I’ve seen the reviews in your courses and I’ve seen that you have indeed helped quite a few people with their careers. Yeah, keep going.

So, the next question would be what’s your plan going forward? Are you going to create more courses? Are you going to delve into other spaces of IT and try to make an impact on the world there? What do you see for yourself


apart from the university and apart from your career? Has this side hobby, has this side business that you’re doing which is completely enabled by Internet and technology—what do you see for yourself in the future and what are your aspirations?

Ilya: I think the first important point to mention is that as long as I keep learning something, as long as I keep finding something new, I want to be able to tell people about it because it’s exciting to tell people about something exciting, and because I will get greater insight on the topic when teaching other people or telling them. So, aside from these Udemy courses, which I don’t know how many more I want to do, because they’re quite hard to do and they take a lot of time, I definitely want to start something like a blog post or some other way of communicating with people and just maybe arguing with them about a certain point of view or asking their opinions and then just talking about it or just telling my ideas about how the world works and then having an engaging conversation. That’s definitely something I would be interesting in, and I’m just trying to validate different possibilities of how to do it. So that will be number one.

And I would say the other goal in my life right now is to make something bigger. So I want to make something bigger than just a blog or courses on Udemy, and I don’t know what that is. Maybe hopefully someday I will design a new software. Or maybe I will just start my own company or maybe I will start consulting. I don’t know what it will be, and I don’t know even in what field it will be, and I really don’t have any information about it yet for myself. I just know that it’s something I want to do because Internet


allows us to do these great things. It just crossed so many rules off the list that existed before. And without any money, without any knowledge, without any time, you can do stuff on the Internet. The only thing you need is motivation. The only thing you need is your drive to do it. And I certainly think that since I’m young, since I’m in Uni, since I still have a whole life to experience, I think I certainly have that and it’s just a question of putting it all in the right direction, in the right idea.

Kirill: Yeah. Wow, that’s a very cool aspiration. It’s like you know you want to do something, but you don’t know what it’s going to be yet. But you’re still searching. You’re still searching for it, and when you find it you’ll actually jump onto it and create something great, I’m sure. And I think a lot of people are kind of in the same space. They feel that there’s something’s going on, that the Internet is changing the world, and they feel this strength and passion to do something, to change the world in some way, but at the same time they don’t know how yet.

And my question to you here will be how do you go about not stopping right now? Like, you don’t know where you want to go. You don’t know exactly what you want to create, but you know you want to create something. I find it always very hard to try to move forward without having an end destination. So my question to you is how do you keep your skills up-to-date? How do you learn new things? How do you explore? How do you look for the thing that you’re searching for? What steps are you taking currently? Maybe that will help some of our listeners, and they can take some of your advice on board and actually search for their ideas in a similar manner.


Ilya: That’s a very good question because I’ve been recently thinking about it a lot. And I’ve heard this phrase that “If you’re in it for the money you will never succeed.” I’m sure everybody heard it at some point, no doubt. It’s a very popular phrase in the culture. But it actually got to me in the sense that when you think about it, all the people, let’s say sports people, all the successful sportsmen out there, they never started doing the sport for the money. They started doing it because they loved it. They started doing it because the company around them was fun. They started doing it for different reasons that just brought them joy. And in the same way you think about singers or actors or any successful businesses that started up in the last decade.

Everybody, of course, always thinks about “Hey, what if I make it big?” But if it doesn’t give you joy to do it without making it big, if it doesn’t make you smile and make you happy at the end of the long working day till you just come home, relax and be like, “Yeah, I did it. I’m very happy about that I did it. Even though I made no money today I made tons of progress and I’m happy about it,” I just think this is not your idea. This is not your life destination. And that just puts the perspective on everything in the sense that all you need to do is find something that you’re passionate about, and that you love doing and in time, it’s inevitable that you will find success.

And that other thing I wanted to say is what works for me. As a millennial, I never was on Facebook much, I never was on social platforms like chit-chatting with other people or looking at different tweets and stuff. But I was spending quite a lot of time on YouTube and other platforms like that. And the only thing I can say is that you will never want to


find your thing, you will never want to find your drive, you will never want to find what you’re good at by looking at other people. And that just for me made a lot of sense when I quit watching YouTube and when I quit just spending time on this different social media where you can see that people who are better than you are doing better than you. People who are the same way as you are doing better than you. And people who have been worse than you, who, for example, don’t have the same level of commitment, or do not know as much information as you do, and they still look better than you. That just puts a very depressing mood on yourself.

And the only thing to overcome it is stop watching all of it and try doing something. Try creating a website, try recording a podcast. Try going and writing down the blog. I think that’s a very important thing because you will never find something you’re passionate about by just looking at other people. You need to try it yourself, add it first, and only then you’ll get your answer. So, I think the most important part for my generation at least, judging by my friends, is to stop looking at other people, stop hearing about other people’s success and worrying about what other people will think of you, and just start doing stuff. It can range from whatever field you are in to the smallest or the biggest tasks or goals you can imagine, but you actually have to do it. Just like I know it’s very boring and I know it’s very common and I know everybody is tired of it, but that really is the only way in life to make it. At least for me, for now, as of now.

Kirill: Yeah, that’s very deep. Thank you very much for that. It’s a very deep thought and yeah, it’s interesting how a lot of people sometimes get caught up in all the social media. Like, we’re addicts to our phones now. I heard a statistic that an


average person checks their phone 160 times per day. And that’s just insane, with all the messages, social media, WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, all these different apps that are on your phone.

Also, like you say, watching YouTube or other platforms, your life trickles away. Yes, you’re watching other people do stuff but you’re living vicariously, and that means you’re not progressing yourself forward. And on that I wanted to mention that a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago I came to Ilya with a question because I don’t follow music trends and I wanted some music to listen to during work. And Ilya recommended me this epic inspirational music on YouTube. Do you remember that?

Ilya: Yeah.

Kirill: And now, whenever he comes, whenever we’re in one apartment he comes into my room and he’s like, “What are you listening to?” and I’m still listening to those three or five soundtracks that he recommended me three years ago and he just keeps laughing at it. But remember, among those you also sent me one really cool video on inspiration. Remember that one with lots of different videos cut into it and it’s got some tracks in the background, and I think it starts off with “Life will beat you to the ground and keep you on your knees if you let it,” something like that. Do you remember that?

Ilya: Yeah.

Kirill: So that’s a really good one. If it’s still available on YouTube we will share it in the podcast notes so that everybody can check it out. And always, even now, whenever I feel like a little bit down, you know, not motivated to work, I just listen


to that one video – I think it’s 6 minutes long – and it completely changes my day and I start working right away. How about you? Do you have something that inspires you, that gives you inspiration in moments when you’re feeling a bit down?

Ilya: Not really, because the only thing I can think of right now is inspiration has to come from yourself. Like, you can get motivated either from external factors or internal, but at the end of the day nobody will take your hand and put it on your keyboard and make you program it. You will have to do it yourself. So, in my case, I think to get inspiration, I just think about life, about different aspects of it, about my friends and about people I look up to and how they’ve been through the same stuff I am, because nobody works 24 hours a day. Nobody of us is a robot. So, I think that what gets me to work, that all people are the same, and people that achieved success, people that are changing other people’s lives, the only thing that they do is put more work into their life, so if I ever wanted to be on that same level I just have to put more work into my life.

Kirill: Yeah, gotcha. That’s very cool. Yeah, and it’s something I guess a lot of people can relate to. That at the end of the day inspiration and motivation comes from within. Alright, I think that was a really cool conversation and now I would like to move on to some rapid fire questions to get a post-millennial’s perspective on life and maybe we’ll get into some data again as well as you answer these questions. First question: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had that is somewhere related to dealing with data in your life?

Ilya: Oh, the challenge is always the same dealing with data. It’s how to upload data in different software. It’s started with


MySQL and then went onto PostgreSQL and then finally it hit me in Microsoft SQL Server because there’s not that much you can do wrong when the data is already uploaded and it’s all correct because you have a certain amount of functions that you can use and you only have a certain amount of ways to use them. Whereas when you’re uploading the data even one small mistake, one field with null rather than actual information, or one cell being out of place can mess up your whole dataset. And that’s definitely the most frustrating thing I have encountered so far.

Kirill: Okay, gotcha. I’m sure a lot of our listeners can relate to that. Data uploading or data preparation is one of the most challenging parts of the data science project life cycle. Next question: What is a recent win you can share with us that you’ve had at Uni or in your life which is somewhat related to dealing with data?

Ilya: That’s a quite interesting question. I can’t really tell you a win straight away because—I don’t know, working with data for me is not about losing or winning, it’s just about being generally enjoyable. And at the end of the day I don’t really think it’s fair to say you won just by performing certain functions in a certain order. So I don’t think I can relate to this question on a data level.

Kirill: Okay, gotcha. What about your subjects at Uni? Is there any subjects you’re proud of that you’ve completed, you’ve done really well at a subject or some project at Uni that you’ve completed recently?

Ilya: I really think BPMN. I’m really happy about it in a sense that it taught me a lot and I learned it very well and I was able to use it in a different aspect of my life. But apart from that, I


would say any mostly theoretical subject that I do I consider a win. Because practical subjects for me are always easy because it’s all about logic. Practice is very easy. You need to put a lot of work in but you will always get the result. When the theoretical subjects are mostly about understanding the topics the way your teacher wants you to understand the topics, and that might be difficult sometimes. So I would consider those subjects a win.

Kirill: Yeah, gotcha. Do you think theoretical subjects are useful if it’s something that you need to understand the way it’s taught? And I completely agree with that. Things are taught differently in different parts of the world and different universities. So do you think they’re actually useful for a person’s career or it’s just a waste of time?

Ilya: I would say right now—beforehand in high school, or in the first year in Uni, I always thought that theoretical subjects were worthless and practical subjects are everything that matters. Now I’ve changed my opinion. I think that theoretical subjects are way more important than practical. Because if I want a code, I don’t need to go to university 26 times in a semester to learn it and work at it at home. All I can do is go online to a different array of teaching services and learn it there quicker, cheaper and more efficient.

But theoretical subjects, at least in the Uni I’m at right now, QUT, they teach us only the rules that do not get old this quick. Because as you understand it, you learn the rule, you learn the theory, then you have another 2 or 3 years to go into your degree, and by the time you graduate, it might already be irrelevant. And so far any theory point or every theoretical notion they’ve taught us, all of it had a long-


lasting effect on the corporate world, on the real world as well.

So it’s always good to understand that, how the world works and where it’s headed to because there’s a lot of laws in IT and business that let you understand why certain start-ups are still failing because it’s just not their time yet. And I just think that’s very interesting and that certainly makes you look at life from a new perspective.

Kirill: Yeah, that’s a really cool concept. I totally agree with that and I think these types of subjects can definitely add value if you approach them with the right mind-set. Alright, next question is what is your one most favourite thing about having data in your life?

Ilya: Integrity. I want to say that. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to lose any work you’ve done. Even 6-7 years ago, I’m sure everybody remembers that if your computer shuts down you’d lose all your Word work, or your Excel, all your documents that you’ve been working on. Today it’s all immediately uploaded to the Cloud, and you will never lose it. Even if your computer shuts down, even if all the grid goes out, even if their main server fails, you will still have your data at the end of the day. And for free or mostly like $5-$10 per month. I think that’s a very small price to pay for that level of security.

And I certainly enjoy where data science is headed because data integrity is the most important part of any data. Because if you have corrupted data you can never get the same analysis from it. It will always be faulty. So I think all the companies out there are looking for ways to improve


data integrity and data security, and that’s only a good thing for all of us.

Kirill: Yeah, fantastic. Actually, a very interesting answer. I haven’t heard that one before. So there you go. The fact that you can get your data copied and saved and backed up and data integrity is a very important aspect to a post-millennial. Okay, I didn’t know that. That’s good.

Next question is kind of a philosophical one. From where you are in your life, and from where you are with your degree and from what you’ve seen about data science and the world of data, where do you think the field of data science is going? What do you think our listeners, whether they’re at Uni or whether they’ve already finished Uni or even haven’t started Uni yet, what do you think our listeners should prepare for to have a successful career in the future?

Ilya: What? Oh, that’s a very interesting question. From a more philosophical point of view, the way I’ll answer it is when you think of a successful doctor, you don’t think of a doctor who can diagnose you with a very rare condition. It’s a doctor who can diagnose you without even looking at you. Maybe you have a common cold. He doesn’t even have to touch you in order to tell you that. Because when we think about efficiency, about people being successful or useful, we don’t think about that 1% or 5% of cases that are hard or unique. We think about the 95% of cases that are all the same and that repeat themselves over and over again. And the thing that allows different doctors to do that, to diagnose you without even looking at you is just the amount of times they’ve encountered these exact same symptoms, this exact same behaviour and this exact same disease.


And I think that’s where data is headed. It will just be absolutely and completely user-targeted, so it will be predicting our every next move, our every step. It will be personalizing all the advertisement, everything we see to us directly without us having to press any buttons or do any actions. So I think that’s where data is headed. The company that can develop that type of behaviour first will win. That’s like out of the question. Because even now—let’s say you had to type in your login and password every time you want to log in on your phone. Then they removed the login and all you have to type in is your password. Then they made it a passcode – that’s way quicker to type. Now they made it touch ID – that’s even quicker and more convenient.

So, the further we go into our lives, the more we advance, it will just become easier and easier, and at some point you will just stop noticing it. And I think in the IT field, that still hasn’t been achieved. And that’s certainly something to look out for. And if you’re working at the very heart of IT, if you can ever recreate that, that will not only make you a lot of money, that will also change the way our life is. And I think that’s the most exciting part about it.

Kirill: Okay, gotcha. And what about for those who are not creating products, for those who are not creating apps and so on? For people who want a career in data science, who want a career in IT, do you have any recommendations for those people?

Ilya: I would say learn. If you only want a career in it, make sure that you want it because even though SQL and all the other programming languages sound exciting, and they are very exciting and logical, it’s very important to do your research first into the industry, into the different companies that are


out there and then try yourself at programming. Because if you feel good about all three of these things, or even two of them, you will be very happy taking this career path.

But if you are not, even though this field is very exciting, and it covers all aspects of our life, it just might not be for you because it really is a field of life. It really is a place where you need to commit 100% just because there’s so much data and it’s so important to be able to work with it perfectly, correctly and in a most efficient way. You will always have to learn. You will always have to keep doing stuff and you will always have to make yourself a better data scientist.

Kirill: Okay. Wow, very controversial answer. There we go. You have to make sure that data science is a field that you really want to get into. And I can relate to that in a way that data science is very broad and you might get a bit misled if you jump into one part of data science, like visualization and you get really good at visualization, but then you try other parts and you realize that you don’t like programming, as Ilya correctly mentioned. So it’s probably a good idea to try all different parts of data science. And if you want to do all of it, that’s great, that’s your career path. But if you’re not excited about some part of it, then early on try to adapt or adjust your career in a way to leverage your strengths and really focus on things that you want to be doing. Would you say that’s a good summary of what you recommended?

Ilya: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.

Kirill: Okay, gotcha. Alright, well, thank you very much for coming on the show. It was very good to have you. And can you tell us how our listeners can contact you, follow you or find you


and follow your career if they’re interested in seeing where this world of data takes you in the future?

Ilya: I’m really not prepared for this question because I haven’t done anything to change the world so far or even anything noticeable. But if they want to contact me for any of the reasons, I guess I’ll just leave the e-mail in the podcast addendum. And yeah, that’s the only thing because I don’t have a Twitter account yet or Instagram account. I do have a LinkedIn.

Kirill: Alright. Cool. So you’re happy for people to connect with you via LinkedIn?

Ilya: Yeah, yeah. I just forgot I had it with all the stuff I’ve been working on myself. Yeah, that would be a very good way indeed.

Kirill: Beautiful. We’ll leave the LinkedIn there. And one final question I have for you today: What is your one favourite book that you can recommend to our listeners for them to improve their careers or even personal lives?

Ilya: One favourite book will be—very hard to choose from, but what I can tell you or recommend to our listeners is there are two books that I’ve read recently, and both of them are good and they just covered the same topic from different perspectives. One of them is called “Sorted!: The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Bossing Your Life.” It’s written by Andy McNab and Dr. Kevin Dutton. One is a psychologist, if I’m not mistaken, and the other one is a former SAS member – Secret Air Service, British Special Forces. And this book, I found it different to tons of other books that are on the market for motivation and getting stuff done and how to get it done. Because it’s pretty short—considering the amount of


words in it, it’s really very short and it only teaches you very few simple rules.

The one I would like to quote right now is the way they do it. The author describes his army life and he says the most important rule there is that you either lead, follow or get out of the way. So I think this is a very important rule when it comes to any aspect of the life. Even if you’re just discussing the decision of whether you want to go to the movies or not, if you followed this rule, you will never have any problems and it’s a way more important rule when it comes to your career choice or just your corporate life. Because by following this rule you will either achieve great things or you will fail very little amount of times. At least I found it to be like that in my university life and my online presence life so far.

And the other book I would like to recommend, it’s called “Drive” and it’s written by Daniel Pink. It’s a very important book because it describes Motivation 3.0. For the listeners that don’t know, there’s basically—what’s Motivation 1.0? It’s the candy and the punishment, that if you do something right reward yourself or if your employee does something right reward him and if he doesn't, just punish him. Then there was Motivation 2.0 that was basically going into that just from a bit different perspective. And now this author Pink, he’s considered this Motivation 3.0, a new theory that caters to our other needs than just money. Basically what he says is that as soon as you make enough money to eat and have roof over your head, there are three main motivators for you. The first one is autonomy – that basically means that you are allowed to do something by yourself. For example, if you’re hiring somebody and you’re listening to this, you need


to make sure that that person is not micromanaged all the time and that he has time to work on himself and prove that he is worth something and that he can do something and he really can put results in.

The second element is mastery, meaning that you always have the space to advance further. You always have the space to improve your skills. For example, with SQL, that would be learning more and more functions going into different, more difficult databases and database designs.

And the last one, which I think is very important, is purpose. You can hear more and more start-ups being about non-monetary values. They’re all about changing the world. They’re all about making lives better, and this is what purpose stands for. Basically it’s that your work matters. So I think these two books, “Drive” and “Sorted!: The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Bossing Your Life” basically cover this wide field of self-motivation and just very, very basic levels of psychology that you might find very useful at times and you might be very interested in.

Kirill: Wow! What a good synopsis of the two books. Thank you very much. I’ve heard of Daniel Pink before. I haven’t read his book “Drive”. I also haven’t read his other book but I’ve read some excerpts out of that one and it was very insightful. And I’ve also heard, I think from you, about Andy McNab, the former SAS agent, so that book must be very good as well. So there you go, guys, that’s two books for you from Ilya. Go check them out if you’re interested. And thank you very much, Ilya, for coming on the show. It was really cool to hear your insights and I’m sure a lot of people will get some very valuable takeaways from today.


Ilya: Thank you for having me. It was very fun. And I hope everybody will just be happy and improve their lives just a bit from listening to this podcast.


Kirill: Wonderful. Thank you and have a good day. So there you have it. That was my brother Ilya Eremenko and I really hope you enjoyed this episode of the SuperDataScience podcast. I’m really curious to find out what your best takeaway was from today’s show because there were so many interesting views and opinions, so many different ways that Generation Z people think about data and technology.

For me personally, the biggest takeaway was probably what Ilya said about privacy of data and that his generation easily exchanges their data for better service, for better insights into their life or better service, better products and better things that they can get for their information, whereas previously – my generation and before – we are more prone to be more conservative in that sense. We want to protect our data whereas the new generation can see the value in exchanging their data for better products and services, for optimized products and services and that is a huge eye-opener. That is where the world is going, so if you’re creating any products or creating any services or you’re in that industry which is B2C, which is facing consumers all around the world, then those are the people you will be dealing with in the years to come.

So thank you so much for coming on the show. Once again, if you’d like to check out our course on SQL and Database Design, head on over to www.superdatascience.com/20 to get your super special invitation. And also, there you’ll find


links and resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as the show notes, as well as the podcast transcript and some links to follow Ilya and his career. I can’t wait to see you next time. Until then, happy analyzing.

Documents

SDS PODCAST EPISODE 20 WITH ILYA EREMENKO · to say. The first one being business theory, such as management, marketing, advanced management theories. The second one is business practical,