My Data Science Journey

My name is Steven Adeneye and I’m the founder of {Solved_by_Steve}. Since 2012 I’ve been fully immersed in the world of data analytics. From creating reports for sales analysis to writing code for IBM Watson, I have a cornucopia of diverse technical experience that I leverage to create unique solutions.

Early Career

From 2010-2017 I was a highly decorated sales leader. My sales career was good to me; I earned a plethora of prizes, awards, and even international trips. I was really good at sales, however, I was unfulfilled. I always gravitated to helping the SalesOps team gather data and create sales reports. My favorite sales memory involves more data analytics than sales strategy. The company that I worked for was launching an IPTV product (think AT&T U-Verse) but our marketing was delayed, meaning that sales calls would be scarce. Being the resourceful data sensei that I am, I quickly gathered customer data from our DOS-like CRM system. From there I extracted a list of customers that were in the service area of the new product and made cold calls; This resulted in my team making the first 20 sales of this product, 2 weeks before any other sales team. I may or may not have bragged about this to the CEO when I met him in Savannah at our sales conference.

Light-bulb Moment

In 2017 I decided to make a drastic change. The company that I worked for at the time offered an accelerator program that allowed me to learn about SEO at their expense. Because I enrolled in and excelled in this program I was able to transition into an SEO specialist role. If I’m honest, I kind of hated the idea that I was technically working for Google without the prestige or the fringe benefits. My paradigm changed when I saw that my analysis of a competitor paired with the implementation of a FAQ schema led to a 30% increase in monthly traffic. It was at this point I realized that I should pursue a career centered around data.

Turning Point

At the height of my SEO career, I took another step towards data by joining the internal tech academy (ITA) at my place of employment. I learned front-end skills like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, JQuery, React JS and Node.js; Most importantly I gained the confidence needed to learn programming languages. I developed several projects and built a foundation of programming that I would use in my SEO specialist role. The grind was real, on average I spent 35 hours per week learning along with the regular 40-50 hours I spent in my normal job function. In retrospect, this was the turning point of my career. Within 6 months of completing the ITA program, I was able to transition into a web publisher role. In addition to being a more hands-on role, web publishing has allowed me to be a more active collaborator on team projects because I understand the “why” (SEO and data analysis) and the “how” (coding/deployment).

The Biggest Step

The biggest step in my journey happened at the beginning of 2021. I enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s (UNCC) Fintech Bootcamp and I discovered a new love. The world of data science immediately captivated my imagination, I became obsessed with learning as much as I could about this field. Through Udemy and LinkedIn Learning, I have invested more than 700 hours of my time in 2021 alone. In May of 2021, I began to leverage my data science skills as a freelancer on the UpWork network. So far, I’ve been able to use my knowledge of data engineering, machine learning, and SEO to gain 100% retention among my clients.

What’s Next? (Head in the Cloud)

Going forward my focus is on mastering the world of big data and cloud computing. My big hairy audacious goal is to acquire the big data certifications for the Microsoft, Google, and Amazon platforms before the end of 2021.

Too Long Didn’t Read?

To be succinct, I am a data science specialist, experienced with Python, JavaScript, and Solidity programming. I specialize in machine learning, data engineering, data analytics, and Blockchain. I love working on projects so please reach out to me to collaborate. Feel free to visit my projects page to see some of my best work.