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Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#41

Post by carlmcqueen »

quadrature wrote: post #39

A good programmer with even just a high level overview of ML and Stats concepts would be an incredibly valuable asset to a data science team. Most ML people are academics who tend to not have good software engineering skills, finding people who master both domains is really hard. Also to add to that most of the work in ML is feature engineering, data cleaning, testing and building pipelines which all require a good s…

I work for a technical statistical team in the financial world, we've been hiring PHDs lately to my team which has just meant exactly what this comment points out.

I do a lot of the grunt work of getting the data sourced, cleaned and ready and am called the 'data wizard' and other such annoying names.

What's frustrating is I can run the last lines of code and read and understand the output of the last step, but as the original question asked, management would prefer someone with a phd or masters in customer analytics to be the expert of the data output.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#42

Post by zengid »

As Mike Acton (Data Oriented Design Guru) once said in an interview "I don't care what you learned in school.. I care about what you learned of your own volition" [paraphrased from 1].

It never hurts to learn new things. Another HN poster suggested this channel for beefing up on linear algebra, and I absolutely love it [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/qWJpI2adCcs?t=58m

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlXfTHzgMRUKXD88IdzS1...

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#43

Post by thro1111111 »

itamarst wrote: post #21

(copied from answer to another similar question.) Companies are looking for what you as a candidate can do for them. Self-study or taking a class signals some level of "I tried to learn this thing." So that's a start. Even better is "I built X", where X is obviously based on skill you learned. In which case you can omit the class because you have proof of learning, not just trying to learn. Even better is "I provided…

While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past. Also while we understand the hacker culture, many only understand "degree > job", they can't comprehend why you don't have a degree if you are so good.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#44

Post by carlmcqueen »

cwyers wrote: post #26
qubex wrote: post #2

You seem to assume that the only use for knowledge is garnering employment: this is patently false, as you could easily learn something and apply it for your own pleasure in the non-professional domain. P.S. It's called ’statistics’.

> P.S. It's called ’statistics’. No, it's not. Read Breiman's "Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures." http://www2.math.uu.se/~thulin/mm/breiman.pdf "Statistics" has largely been concerned with the "data modelling culture" Breiman talks about; a lot of data science is focused on algorithmic modelling, things like neural nets, random forests, and so on. A lot of these techniques have been refined outside of modern st…

on topic: https://xkcd.com/1831/

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#45

Post by itamarst »

thro1111111 wrote: post #43
itamarst wrote: post #21

(copied from answer to another similar question.) Companies are looking for what you as a candidate can do for them. Self-study or taking a class signals some level of "I tried to learn this thing." So that's a start. Even better is "I built X", where X is obviously based on skill you learned. In which case you can omit the class because you have proof of learning, not just trying to learn. Even better is "I provided…

While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past. Also while we understand the hacker culture, many only understand "degree > job", they can't comprehend why you don't have a degree if you are so go…

Depends a lot on the company. I know many successful programmers without a CS degree, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#46

Post by Helmet »

quadrature wrote: post #39

A good programmer with even just a high level overview of ML and Stats concepts would be an incredibly valuable asset to a data science team. Most ML people are academics who tend to not have good software engineering skills, finding people who master both domains is really hard. Also to add to that most of the work in ML is feature engineering, data cleaning, testing and building pipelines which all require a good s…

Really? I don't know if I'm good, but I think I'm at least a "decent" programmer and I have a solid grasp of ML and Stats concepts and I've had absolutely no luck getting interviews, much less call backs for data science jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#47

Post by computerex »

thro1111111 wrote: post #43
itamarst wrote: post #21

(copied from answer to another similar question.) Companies are looking for what you as a candidate can do for them. Self-study or taking a class signals some level of "I tried to learn this thing." So that's a start. Even better is "I built X", where X is obviously based on skill you learned. In which case you can omit the class because you have proof of learning, not just trying to learn. Even better is "I provided…

While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past. Also while we understand the hacker culture, many only understand "degree > job", they can't comprehend why you don't have a degree if you are so go…

> While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past.

Definitely not my experience. I can count on one hand the number of employers who didn't want to proceed because of a lack of degree.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#48

Post by ooqr »

Helmet wrote: post #46
quadrature wrote: post #39

A good programmer with even just a high level overview of ML and Stats concepts would be an incredibly valuable asset to a data science team. Most ML people are academics who tend to not have good software engineering skills, finding people who master both domains is really hard. Also to add to that most of the work in ML is feature engineering, data cleaning, testing and building pipelines which all require a good s…

Really? I don't know if I'm good, but I think I'm at least a "decent" programmer and I have a solid grasp of ML and Stats concepts and I've had absolutely no luck getting interviews, much less call backs for data science jobs.

Heck, before my first web dev job, it was VERY difficult to get a foot in the door. Now I feel like getting a restraining order on recruiters.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#49

Post by sillysaurus3 »

computerex wrote: post #47
thro1111111 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past. Also while we understand the hacker culture, many only understand "degree > job", they can't comprehend why you don't have a degree if you are so go…

> While this sounds rational, I don't think that's how it works in most cases. Those who do the hiring usually prefer covering themselves by hiring someone with a degree rather than having to explain how they hired you because you made millions to someone else in the past. Definitely not my experience. I can count on one hand the number of employers who didn't want to proceed because of a lack of degree.

For data science specifically?

Remember, this question isn't about general CS.

Re: Ask HN: Is it a waste of time to teach yourself data science without a degree?

#50

Post by EternalData »

A lot of employers still use degrees as a rough proxy for ability and dedication. This may be especially prevalent in data science since the field itself tends to have a lot of Masters/PhDs occupying the field -- which will tend to bias the hiring process towards viewing degrees as a strong positive signal.

With that said, a lot of companies hiring for data science roles fall into the category of software startups -- larger companies like Google or Facebook are looking for specialists who tend to hold degrees. But at smaller companies, you can be more of a generalist and there, the old mantra of "show me what you've built" often applies. You could build out a data science career if you found just the right company.

By no means is it easy, but I wouldn't say it's a waste of your time (unless you have some incredible opportunity cost you're using up).

If you were to go about doing it, I found this blog post that can help you with your plan of attack: https://www.springboard.com/blog/learn-data-science-without-...

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