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Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#121

Post by user5994461 »

shepardrtc wrote: post #106
user5994461 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a friend at GooMAzonSoft to refer you. It's always been and will always be the easiest way in. Then traditional uninteresting phone call and uninspired 6 hours on site with people who probably didn't read your resume. Maybe if you have a good profile and you get lucky, you'll go interview straight for one group who's interested in you, but I wouldn't bet on that.

Referrals from your friends do little to nothing at those companies. At Microsoft, for instance, all it does is assign a "handler" to the applications you put in. They just let you know if anyone is looking at them. Which, as you can imagine, is useless. Almost no one, except for maybe very high level hires, get a pass for the initial weed-out interviews.

You can't get into the interview pipeline without a referral.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#122

Post by user5994461 »

sigstoat wrote: post #58
user5994461 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds weird to me. Does American PhD don't have to work for a few years at real companies as part of the PhD curriculum?

no. it's even a stereotype that they've never worked at a company. where is it required that PhDs work at companies to receive a degree?

France. There are various internships dues during the PhD and the final paper is done while working 1-3 years at one place.

Basically, everyone has experience when they graduate from a master or a PhD there.

Not all experiences are born equal. e.g. Some work is at top tech companies, some work is at universities or low quality research centers with little work & expectations.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#123

Post by milia »

simonhughes22 wrote: post #65

I am the Chief Data Scientist of Dice.com. If you are interested in working as a junior Data Scientist, and are smart and hard working, please apply here: http://careeropportunities.dhigroupinc.com/ . The position is a telecommute role. We will absolutely consider people with no data science experience, so long as they demonstrate an aptitude for data science \ machine learning and can code.

Is this only for people living in the US and have the relevant work permit?

I understand that it's a remote job, but I'm not sure if you'd be considering people from Europe as well.

ps: the link works fine now

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#124

Post by wjn0 »

spraak wrote: post #87
wjn0 wrote: post #14

I'm an undergrad at a big university known for CS in Canada. The CS program here has several possible 'focuses'; 4 of 9 are related to ML/AI directly (computer vision, NLP, AI, scientific computing). 2 others require AI/ML/NN courses. The bias might stem from the fact that we have some huge names in AI doing research here, but the data points seem clear (we say undergraduate education is slow to catch on, right?): th…

Is there some reason you'd rather write > I'm an undergrad at a big university known for CS in Canada than the actual name of the university? > I'm an undergrad at ${name of university}

It conveys more relevant information than just the name would, in this case.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#125

Post by throw_away_777 »

From someone who is looking to transition to data science, the field is terrible if you haven't had an industry job before. I am ranked in the top 150 on Kaggle and can't even get phone interviews without someone in my network recommending me for a position.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#126

Post by laughfactory »

As many have said here, and as a working and apparently in-demand data scientist, I agree that the tricky part about data science is that being effective isn't a matter of just any one thing. You have to be a unicorn of sorts who is, above all things, capable of solving any problem which comes your way. You have to be exceptionally flexible and very scrappy.

There are a lot of people who know more about modeling, software engineering, statistics, machine learning, analytics, and so on than I do. But I excel at bringing everything together and solving difficult business problems. It's really difficult to train someone to be this way. It takes a lot of time, experience, skills, and a unique disposition to be an effective data scientist. At least to be the kind of data scientist I am. And I'm still early in my career.

Just my two cents. I suspect there will continue to be a glut of people who, on paper, have the data science skills, but lack all the intangibles. Who knows, maybe the various programs and boot camps will start doing business scenario learning: here's a tough real world problem where we don't tell you how to solve it, but we desperately need you to figure it out. Go!

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#127

Post by shepardrtc »

user5994461 wrote: post #121
shepardrtc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referrals from your friends do little to nothing at those companies. At Microsoft, for instance, all it does is assign a "handler" to the applications you put in. They just let you know if anyone is looking at them. Which, as you can imagine, is useless. Almost no one, except for maybe very high level hires, get a pass for the initial weed-out interviews.

You can't get into the interview pipeline without a referral.

I've gotten into the interview pipeline without a referral in other places. My friend got into the interview pipeline in Microsoft without a referral.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#128

Post by shepardrtc »

whenwillitstop wrote: post #110
shepardrtc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referrals from your friends do little to nothing at those companies. At Microsoft, for instance, all it does is assign a "handler" to the applications you put in. They just let you know if anyone is looking at them. Which, as you can imagine, is useless. Almost no one, except for maybe very high level hires, get a pass for the initial weed-out interviews.

Not true. I'm a run of the mill developer. I had another offer, I called google, told them I had another offer. They skipped all the rounds but the final.

They skipped screening and whiteboarding because you simply said you had another offer?

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#129

Post by taway_1212 »

freyr wrote: post #117
taway_1212 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise is often that, as a programmer, you are a part of tightly controlled agile/SCRUM team, while DS get much more independence in their jobs.

> as a programmer, you are a part of tightly controlled agile/SCRUM team I see. I'm currently in a research lab, and programming is my main day-to-day activity. I have a high degree of autonomy, but have recently considered moving to a product division so I can work on something that actually gets shipped. But it doesn't sound so great, as you describe it. Maybe it's a case of the grass always looking greener on the…

Millions of programmers work on stuff that gets shipped and I'd say their job satisfaction isn't very high on average. Shipping is overrated; the culture of shipping as a cool thing is cultivated by company owners who want people to think that they enjoy realising company goals.

Re: Ask HN: What's the state of the job market in data science and machine learning?

#130

Post by ice109 »

shas3 wrote: post #30
runT1ME wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key difference is whether the candidate truly understands the mathematical and statistical basis of machine learning Can you elaborate on this, and at what level? Are you talking about a PhD level of understanding of cutting edge mathematics, or do you mean understand the basics, or somewhere in between?

I think the following interview questions can help screen candidates (not an exhaustive list): 1. Asking a candidate to cast a non-standard problem of classification or estimation into a tractable optimization problem. (this is a very valuable skill that someone who has done good studies in numerical linear algebra/machine learning/stat/information theory/control systems/signal processing/math/etc. should be able to…

very good response
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