I’ve only worked for two companies in my career as a data scientist. The first one was a large, non-tech company, and we had mountains of “process”—Jira, Agile, stand-ups, training sessions on scrum, etc. I found it difficult to be productive, and I think my teammates did as well.

The second company (that I still work for) is a large tech company, and there is almost zero prescribed process (at least for the teams I’ve been on; can’t speak for the entire company). Counterintuitively, everyone seems to be vastly more productive. In terms of process, the most we might do is to put together a loose project roadmap in a Google Doc or something, but that’s about it. There are no stand-ups. Superfluous meetings are discouraged. I have a weekly 1:1 with my manager to ensure my work and goals are aligned with the team priorities. It’s really nice because I feel like I actually have room to breath and get things done rather than attempt to “have something ready” for the standup the next day.

At my first company, I arrived there as early as I could in the morning and left after exactly 8 hours. At my current company, I don’t have that desire to finish up the work day as quickly as possible. Although that might also have something to do with the second company rewarding performance and impact much more heavily than the first company—hard to tell how all of these different incentives influences employee psychology and behavior.