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

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

#141

Post by rdudek » Mon, May 08, 2017, 12:18 AM UTC

klibertp wrote: post #66

rdudek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great, however, the biggest roadblock might be the automated HR application scanning. As a victim of this, I'm back in school to finish my degree that I started 17 years ago.

How is it going? How do you do it? I'm in a similar position right now, but every time I think about being subject to the bureaucracy again I shudder and choose to write interesting blog posts instead... It's not about the costs or the time; I feel like my dignity as a professional (and possibly even as a human being) would be threatened. It could be because of the way the higher education is set up in my country, th…

It's going well. It's tough working full time, kids, and accelerated full time courses. I have almost no free time what-so-ever. Currently taking a B.S. Computer Science program at Regis University.

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

#142

Post by usgroup » Mon, May 08, 2017, 10:02 AM UTC

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…

I think with DS more often than not you're being hired into an existing operation rather than being the first hire. Your hiring manager will likely be a DS guy with a higher degree who'll hardly believe that his PhD was a waste of time. Like finds like, people like me, and all that ...

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

#143

Post by GoodbyeEarl » Tue, May 09, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

rdudek wrote: post #140

GoodbyeEarl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask which degree was that?

I'm working on B.S. in Computer Science

Do you take the classes at night and work full time during the day? That sounds tough considering you also have kids. Congratulations!

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

#144

Post by scott_s » Wed, May 10, 2017, 3:08 PM UTC

arcanus wrote: post #91

Pandabob wrote: post #73

On a related topic, I'm graduating with a master's in (computational) physics, and am already incredibly insecure about not having a PhD as many of the data science positions seem to prefer those. Would a four year PhD, let's say in ML, be a worthwhile investment from a data science career point of view?

> a four year PhD Those exist? Be careful, very few doctorates are short and well-scoped. Source: three letter, several of my friends were 7+, masters or not.

[raises hand]

Including Master's (which was when I did most of my graduate course work), I took about 7.5 for a PhD.