Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 102 posts

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#61

Post by zengid »

Amygaz wrote: post #23
reureu wrote: post #15

This is an article making baseless generalizations that all data science is failing in Silicon Valley, and that the true need of a company is to hire a "data strategist." Unsurprisingly, the article is written by a self-proclaimed data strategist. This blog post would be more compelling if there were citations or even general context backing up the authors pretty wild claims ("the vast majority (we are talking 80-90%…

That was also my impression. It's kind of ironic that a Data Science/Strategist writing would be so heavily opinionated and have so little in term of data.

Maybe that's because the strategy is to produce bullshit

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#62

Post by PopsiclePete »

I've never seen a "data scientist" produce anything meaningful, at least at my company. They run some data through some Python framework and produce weird meaningless numbers that I'm supposed to be impressed by or to trust. No insight as to how that number came to be. "87.525%". Ok sweet. Could've come from /dev/urandom for all I know. At least 3 of them have left in the 2 years that I've been here.

It seems like 90% of these guys are buzzword wankers who jumped onto the "Big $$$" bandwagon. Same type of person who put "PHP Wizard" on their resume in 2005.

Good riddance.

I'm sure, of course, that quite a few of them are decent, intelligent people producing real value at real companies. But the ones I've dealt with? Nah.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#63

Post by kk58 »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #16

A working knowledge of some basic stats, access to some decent tooling, a good working knowledge of what the organization is trying to accomplish and the ability to persuade and lead based on findings will likely move the revenue needle much more for most companies than a pure "data science" role. The trouble is of course we don't have a good name for that role, so it's all "data science".

Thats just smart manager with good communication skills

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#64

Post by cs702 »

reureu wrote: post #15

This is an article making baseless generalizations that all data science is failing in Silicon Valley, and that the true need of a company is to hire a "data strategist." Unsurprisingly, the article is written by a self-proclaimed data strategist. This blog post would be more compelling if there were citations or even general context backing up the authors pretty wild claims ("the vast majority (we are talking 80-90%…

This was pretty much my reaction.

I considered flagging the article but decided against it after reading your comment, which I hope remains visible.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#65

Post by deong »

shas3 wrote: post #14

The dissing of PhDs is unwarranted. Gross over-generalization. People being skeptical of ideas in a peer-review sort of way can be both good and bad. For example, the assumptions and claims of this article can do with a substantial amount of skepticism. Perhaps someone should express skepticism and view this article with the peer-review critical eye that he mentions. I am reminded of climate-change skeptic articles t…

Also, the idea that peer review is rife with people killing articles to save their "pet theory" is idiotic. Reviewers just want you to cite them.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#66

Post by deong »

kk58 wrote: post #63
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #16

A working knowledge of some basic stats, access to some decent tooling, a good working knowledge of what the organization is trying to accomplish and the ability to persuade and lead based on findings will likely move the revenue needle much more for most companies than a pure "data science" role. The trouble is of course we don't have a good name for that role, so it's all "data science".

Thats just smart manager with good communication skills

Most managers fail in the "knowledge of basic stats" and "access to decent tools" areas. And if they have the knowledge, most larger organizations don't have a ton of managers sitting around writing python code during the day. Their day is full of meetings.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#67

Post by kk58 »

Data science and machine learning are different beasts. CS based Machine learning and AI seem useful in task automation. Its real value is in building IP.

DATA science is more like quant consulting.It is actually a subdiscipline in management science in my opinion.

The key role of a data scientist in non SV company is usually 6-fold. First understand the business problem thoroughly. Get the people,process and value stack nailed.

Second and this is the most imp part. Figure out how to frame the business problem. Framing isnt as linear as it looks. But it helps save a ton of time and money if you front load time in framing problem. Substep here is to frame it as an "information" or data problem.

Third articulate a strategy to gather data or information. Inhouse data available? Web scrape data, buy data, build generative models. Youd be suprised how much ML work happens in this step

Fourth shape the information to a format that can be analysed.

Fifth, study the hell out of this dataset- the PHD angle comes here. Very few people are systematically trained to study data with rigor and be humble and honest about their findings.

Lastly connect the dots between insights and business problem at hand.too often this stops with bar graphs and some scatter plots. Thats just lazy. You need to really take ownership of the problem and educate business why the solution will help and be honest about ehat it will take to get it to work. The people, process,value stack in line 1 kicks in here in recommendation and action.

A bonus point. Put some kpi to track how well your suggestions are working.

Real data science is super super hard. Its like finding a real nugget of diamond in dust.

Data science is a way thinking. Its a business culture to be honest.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#68

Post by saosebastiao »

Pardon the cynicism, but all I see when I read this is MBA turd-word lobbing. It is meaningless drivel, bloviating self-promotion directed at people who don't understand anything about how their world works while thinking they are qualified to lead it because of X degree at Y institution, the admittance of whom was due to Z (powerful rich person) that is friends with his dad.

Others have noted the lack of data coming from a data strategist. That is the feature, not the flaw. Data isn't necessary in these people's worlds. They spout platitudes about data, laud it when it supports their world view, and ignore it when it doesn't. People that buy the world that this guy is selling are suckers.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#69

Post by alergico »

autokad wrote: post #22
ataturk wrote: post #12

It was all hype. All of it. I enjoyed learning about data science, but in the end, there were no jobs I could actually apply for and realistically get. I also don't think they were providing the big wins for the company that would justify what they were getting paid. Again, all hype.

same here. i work great in teams, masters in computer science, do really well in kaggle competitions, I understand when to use the algorithms, how they work, etc. but in the very few ds interviews I had, I was tanked as soon I got asked questions like: whats the formula for a T test. I know what the test is, and when its not appropriate to apply it, but I don't memorize those kinds of formulas. the field is just too…

Try looking for a company that does take-home assignments (these are mostly Kaggle-type problems). Then you don't need to learn formulas by rote, and the interview can focus on the assignment you did.

Experimental design (statistics) is important, but data science is a team sport. The people specialized in statistics may not be able to code up a deep net, and vice versa.

Computer scientists make great data scientists, especially if you know data infra. If I were to start a team from scratch, I'd focus on software engineers and physicists. Most are willing to pick up some ML to broaden their skills, and the ability to go end-to-end from conception to production is invaluable.

Re: Why Are Data Science Leaders Running for the Exit?

#70

Post by taeric »

jbooth wrote: post #50
sjg007 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "too academically focused" ? Developing new methods?

Yeah. Academia doesn't care about interesting applications, they care about novel methods. "I made a huge difference for the business by being thoughtful about feature selection and then applying a bog-standard regression method" isn't appealing to the academic mindset.

To be fair, people are chasing a force multiplier here. Yeah, that is a buzzy term. :( No I don't like that.

So, what I mean is that people are looking for something where they can apply one team's work and use it across many teams. The more the better. The idea is that you don't have to have many people being thoughtful producing methods, you just need many working hard applying them. If there is a better term for that, I'm game to use it.

Post reply on HN