{"id":28642,"date":"2020-06-11T12:11:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T10:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/?p=28642"},"modified":"2022-01-26T18:12:41","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T16:12:41","slug":"eu-alumnus-hidayat-heydarov-mercedes-benz-io","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumnus-hidayat-heydarov-mercedes-benz-io\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Alumnus\u202fHidayat Heydarov, Data Scientist and Product Owner at Mercedes-Benz.io"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">EU alumnus&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;Heydarov&nbsp;works at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercedes-benz.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Mercedes-Benz.io (opens in a new tab)\">Mercedes-Benz.io<\/a>&nbsp;as a&nbsp;data&nbsp;scientist and&nbsp;product&nbsp;owner.&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;graduated with a BA in International Business from EU Business School\u2019s Munich campus in 2015. He&nbsp;then&nbsp;pursued&nbsp;a&nbsp;master\u2019s in&nbsp;economics and&nbsp;politics from the University of Freiburg. Originally from Azerbaijan,&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He speaks Azerbaijani, English, German, Russian and Turkish. During his very-limited free time he likes to play music and write.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hidayat&nbsp;spoke to us about his&nbsp;career&nbsp;and&nbsp;working with data at Daimler and then Mercedes-Benz.io.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What path did you take to reach your current role?&nbsp;<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My time at EU was focused on international business. I&nbsp;then did the dual program with the University of Derby, focusing on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/en\/Programs\/Bachelor-s\/BA-Hons-in-Business-Management-International-Business-Barcelona\/Overview\/Overview.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"international business management (opens in a new tab)\">international business management<\/a>. I was part of the first generation in the program&nbsp;which&nbsp;was&nbsp;pretty cool. After graduation, I thought I would&nbsp;go straight to&nbsp;work but didn&#8217;t really find anything&nbsp;that matched&nbsp;what&nbsp;I wanted. I&nbsp;decided&nbsp;to&nbsp;pursue&nbsp;a&nbsp;master\u2019s degree and stay in Germany. I studied at the University of&nbsp;Freiburg&nbsp;where&nbsp;I also&nbsp;taught&nbsp;economics and politics to bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s students&nbsp;as a graduate teaching assistant. During my last semester I wasn\u2019t convinced&nbsp;by&nbsp;the path I was on,&nbsp;so I&nbsp;took&nbsp;some courses at the University of Basel on&nbsp;machine learning in economics and finance.&nbsp;I decided I wanted to work in this new field with data, so I joined Daimler Financial&nbsp;Services doing a project in risk management,&nbsp;using&nbsp;machine learning&nbsp;to&nbsp;try to predict economic risk based on the global&nbsp;news. That was my first real-world project without having a&nbsp;pre-prepared&nbsp;data set like you do as a student, so it was a \u201chit the ground running\u201d sort of learning experience. From Daimler, I moved to Mercedes-Benz.io and became a&nbsp;data&nbsp;scientist for a few months before also becoming a&nbsp;product&nbsp;owner.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What exactly is a product owner and what does your current job consist of?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Within the agile structure a product owner, together with a product team, moves all the UX and UI professionals as well as data scientists and engineers to deliver&nbsp;a solution.&nbsp;We work in&nbsp;enablement teams&nbsp;without a&nbsp;manager. There\u2019s always&nbsp;a&nbsp;supervisor&nbsp;but&nbsp;it\u2019s not&nbsp;like&nbsp;the top-down approach where people tell you directly what to do. A product owner does not come up with&nbsp;a product,&nbsp;technical framework&nbsp;or an aesthetic.&nbsp;A&nbsp;product&nbsp;owner&nbsp;makes&nbsp;sure&nbsp;the work&nbsp;being done by the team&nbsp;is,&nbsp;and remains,&nbsp;aligned with&nbsp;the result&nbsp;the team needs to deliver.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What aptitudes&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>are needed<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;to work as a product owner?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once you\u2019ve grasped the structures, which is a steep learning curve, you are continually exploring new worlds,&nbsp;so&nbsp;being open&nbsp;is&nbsp;really important.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hidayat_Heydarov-min1.jpg\" alt=\"mercedes benz\" class=\"wp-image-28645\" width=\"1004\" height=\"667\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a product owner, I&#8217;m not really \u201cMaster Yoda\u201d in every field I&#8217;m working&nbsp;in&nbsp;\u2013 like data science, data engineering, UX development or front and back end&nbsp;development. Within the team there are people who specifically work on those things.&nbsp;As&nbsp;product&nbsp;owner&nbsp;I&nbsp;need to be open to what they&#8217;re saying, because I don&#8217;t know everything in detail. I try not to put people under pressure to do specific tasks, they&#8217;re always free to decide what they do, with&nbsp;the&nbsp;supervision of Scrum Masters. Because of that, a vital component of the agile&nbsp;system is a communication feedback loop.&nbsp;If there is a properly defined feedback loop within your product development, then everything&nbsp;will work&nbsp;well.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, let&#8217;s say&nbsp;my team&nbsp;develops&nbsp;a feature&nbsp;and a&nbsp;stakeholder looks at it&nbsp;and&nbsp;gives&nbsp;us&nbsp;feedback.&nbsp;Based on that feedback&nbsp;we&nbsp;will&nbsp;develop&nbsp;the feature&nbsp;further&nbsp;or replace it if it is not&nbsp;what&nbsp;the&nbsp;client wants. So as a product owner you&nbsp;need to&nbsp;be&nbsp;really flexible,&nbsp;make sure that your team is motivated&nbsp;and that they don\u2019t&nbsp;deviate from the final goal.&nbsp;That\u2019s key, because there will be a lot of new things that&nbsp;evolve throughout&nbsp;the process&nbsp;and occasionally&nbsp;even stakeholders&nbsp;who&nbsp;want to deviate from the original goal.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What is a data scientist? How do you work with analytics and process data?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What I&#8217;m&nbsp;currently&nbsp;doing as a product owner is to migrate&nbsp;our&nbsp;analytics&nbsp;tech stack&nbsp;to&nbsp;the&nbsp;cloud. As a data scientist, you need to&nbsp;be familiar with&nbsp;all the tools&nbsp;that are&nbsp;available to you. As an analyst, you want to scale up productivity and deliver better things.&nbsp;The cloud is one solution&nbsp;and&nbsp;I&nbsp;would say it\u2019s the only&nbsp;solution that&nbsp;enables&nbsp;you&nbsp;to&nbsp;scale up&nbsp;or handle a lot of information&nbsp;without&nbsp;incurring notable&nbsp;extra cost.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, we anonymously&nbsp;track&nbsp;user interaction&nbsp;within&nbsp;Mercedes-Benz&nbsp;websites,&nbsp;which&nbsp;produces&nbsp;a lot of data.&nbsp;This is important for&nbsp;several functions&nbsp;such as&nbsp;descriptive analysis&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;things&nbsp;like&nbsp;the numbers of&nbsp;unique visitors,&nbsp;unique visits&nbsp;and new&nbsp;leads&nbsp;on&nbsp;the website.&nbsp;There&nbsp;are&nbsp;also&nbsp;predictive analytics&nbsp;where&nbsp;we would, for example,&nbsp;predict&nbsp;a user\u2019s&nbsp;next action. You&nbsp;can&nbsp;see it a lot already on Amazon&nbsp;or Netflix&nbsp;in&nbsp;their&nbsp;recommendation systems.&nbsp;We\u2019re trying to bring that to Mercedes Benz as well.&nbsp;&nbsp;All of this is done&nbsp;with vast quantities of&nbsp;data, which we can&#8217;t do on a local system.&nbsp;In order to&nbsp;be able to access large amounts of data, scrub it,&nbsp;organize it and then scale up our work, we are&nbsp;migrating everything to&nbsp;the&nbsp;cloud. It\u2019s&nbsp;a big chunk of my job.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>D<\/strong><strong>o you think people are relying more on data<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;and less on&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>gut feeling<\/strong><strong>?<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;What are the pros and cons of that?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People are&nbsp;definitely using&nbsp;more data now&nbsp;which is&nbsp;fortunate because our gut feelings are wrong most of the time&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;humans&nbsp;are much more biased than data is. However,&nbsp;we still need human judgment&nbsp;to interpret data&nbsp;because most machine learning tools find patterns&nbsp;and&nbsp;correlations,&nbsp;but they don&#8217;t look for causation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example,&nbsp;we had a case a year ago&nbsp;where&nbsp;management wanted to&nbsp;know&nbsp;the reasons&nbsp;U.K.&nbsp;automotive sales&nbsp;were&nbsp;going down.&nbsp;One of our data science teams&nbsp;concluded&nbsp;that it was due to the impact of&nbsp;coffee&nbsp;prices.&nbsp;Obviously, something about that conclusion doesn\u2019t seem&nbsp;right.&nbsp;Logically,&nbsp;coffee prices won&#8217;t&nbsp;directly&nbsp;affect <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"automotive industry  (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/communications-pr-automotive-industry\/\" target=\"_blank\">automotive industry <\/a>sales. But&nbsp;there might be a&nbsp;third variable that impacts both coffee and car sales&nbsp;and you&nbsp;have to&nbsp;look for that.&nbsp;We still need human beings&nbsp;to perform&nbsp;these kinds of interpretations&nbsp;which&nbsp;computers&nbsp;cannot yet do.&nbsp;The optimal&nbsp;order&nbsp;is to&nbsp;gather the&nbsp;data&nbsp;first&nbsp;before&nbsp;interpreting what it signifies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Start<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;your career with<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;EU Business School\u202f<\/strong><strong>\u202f<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether you have a particular&nbsp;role or industry&nbsp;in mind, or like&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;are interested in exploring different topics to find out what interests and motivates you the most, EU Business School can help you&nbsp;kickstart your career.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We offer dynamic English-taught programs from bachelor\u2019s to MBA level across our five campuses in Barcelona, Geneva, Montreux, Munich and online.&nbsp;Our pragmatic approach to education gives students first-hand business&nbsp;experience&nbsp;through access to&nbsp;guest speaker sessions, visits to top multinational companies,&nbsp;a&nbsp;diverse&nbsp;international&nbsp;peer group&nbsp;and a faculty of entrepreneurs, consultants and business leaders&nbsp;who draw on their own careers to teach the next generation of innovators&nbsp;and global CEOs.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/en\/Programs\/programs.html?utm_campaign=blog-menu&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=banner&amp;utm_mode=30\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/EU_Generic_750x125.gif\" alt=\"eu business school cta\" class=\"wp-image-27702\" width=\"1208\" height=\"201\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EU alumnus&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;Heydarov&nbsp;works at Mercedes-Benz.io&nbsp;as a&nbsp;data&nbsp;scientist and&nbsp;product&nbsp;owner.&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;graduated with a BA in International Business from EU Business School\u2019s Munich campus in 2015. He&nbsp;then&nbsp;pursued&nbsp;a&nbsp;master\u2019s in&nbsp;economics and&nbsp;politics from the University of Freiburg. Originally from Azerbaijan,&nbsp;Hidayat&nbsp;now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He speaks Azerbaijani, English, German, Russian and Turkish. During his very-limited free time he likes to play music and write.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hidayat&nbsp;spoke to us about his&nbsp;career&nbsp;and&nbsp;working with data at Daimler and then Mercedes-Benz.io.&nbsp; What path did you take to reach your current role?&nbsp;&nbsp; My time at EU was focused on international business. I&nbsp;then did the dual program with the University of Derby, focusing on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1770,636],"tags":[1707,1520,1263,741],"class_list":["post-28642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-development","category-alumni","tag-business-advice","tag-career-advice","tag-eu-alumni","tag-international-business","post--single"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\r\n<title>EU Alumnus\u202fHidayat Heydarov, Data Scientist &amp; Product Owner at Mercedes-Benz.io<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hidayat studied BA in International Business at EU Business School\u2019s Munich campus. 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