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Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

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Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#51

Post by ataturk »

danmg wrote: post #17
ryguytilidie wrote: post #8

Recruiter here. Data Science is one of ~3 roles I generally don't recruit for. Not because Data Scientists are super hard to find, but more because companies seem to all want data scientists and all want them to do completely different things and none of them really understand those things. Makes for a pretty lame hiring experience unfortunately. :(

For every 'real' data science job which requires deep knowledge of statistics and machine learning, there are 50 DBA positions where they want you to know some python.

I'd be okay with that. I spent a few months in 2016 re-learning statistics and getting a handle on ML and other topics. I have a PhD in a related field. It was a no-brainer for me. NOT ONE JOB locally. None. Gave up the search in abject failure and went back to Java land.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#52

Post by PunchTornado »

make3 wrote: post #47
kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

In real life, problems are hard and require theoretical investigation to do well. That's the actual job! The theoretical investigation. Not the programming. The programming is really easy. which is part of why having 15 years in software doesn't have so much weight.

I would say the non-programming part, the theoretical investigation is really easy. Plus the majority of data science do data cleaning 80% of their time.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#53

Post by maxxxxx »

make3 wrote: post #47
kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

In real life, problems are hard and require theoretical investigation to do well. That's the actual job! The theoretical investigation. Not the programming. The programming is really easy. which is part of why having 15 years in software doesn't have so much weight.

How many data scientists really do theoretical investigation? From what I see not too many. It feels a little like looking only for devs who can write complete operating systems and then having them write CRUD apps.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#54

Post by MadSudaca »

I don't think data science would be a hot job if advances in data engineering (arguably, another ill-defined term) hadn't been achieved. Because of this I like this definition of data scientist, although I can't remember where I read it:

"A data scientist is someone who knows more about statistics than your average software developer, but more about software development than your average statistician".

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#55

Post by confounded »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #48
kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

I had the same experience in my last job search. I only did a bachelors. Even with many projects on my resume that were completely data science focused, my response rate was almost zero for those types of positions. My response rate was very good otherwise. It's frustrating. Based on my conversations at data science/analytics meetups, my knowledge is greater than that of the average employed data scientist. My sugges…

> Based on my conversations at data science/analytics meetups, my knowledge is greater than that of the average employed data scientist.

Sounds like you may already be too good at data science to ever get any actual experience of it.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#56

Post by cosmie »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #8

Recruiter here. Data Science is one of ~3 roles I generally don't recruit for. Not because Data Scientists are super hard to find, but more because companies seem to all want data scientists and all want them to do completely different things and none of them really understand those things. Makes for a pretty lame hiring experience unfortunately. :(

> all want them to do completely different things and none of them really understand those things

It's the HR equivalent of deciding to rebuild your solidly performing website with some hot new v0.1 frontend javascript framework purely because it's the new hot stuff. Perpetuated and reinforced by C-Suite level desires to appear trendy and cutting edge.

When I ran an Analytics/BI team, I was well aware of what I needed and wanted. But constantly had to fight to not have HR label open positions as Data Science roles.

Once I got them to start posting the position with Data Analyst and Data Strategist titles instead, the team satisfaction scores and attrition rate markedly improved. The (very competitive) pay rate and actual work was the same as it was under Data Scientist titles. But it better scoped the candidate pool and aligned expectations up front, rather than hiring a bright-eyed and overqualified Masters/PhD graduate and being the company that disillusions them to the reality of most "data science" roles.

Although I can understand the desire to ride the hype train for those executives. Being pragmatic improved my team and benefited my company, but cost me the ability to add Data Science as a buzzword to my resume, and "Created, managed, and scaled a Data Management and Operational Analytics/BI organization" doesn't have as much market value.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#57

Post by CuriouslyC »

peatmoss wrote: post #21
_qbxp wrote: post #13

I'll be completely honest, as your standard "data scientist" who hopped on the bandwagon and came from having a PhD in academia in an unrelated field, I cringe at these articles. I'm not entirely sure why. I think it may be two-fold: 1. A little bit of the selfish "oh no, the secret's out, at what point is my salary going to drop when the demand is met by the dedicated Master's degrees and bootcamps?" and 2. These ar…

My goodness, are you me? I've been having exactly the same thoughts. Provided one finds a data science role that roughly aligns with your training / interests, the actual work is comically easy compared to what you go through in academia. A boot camp can easily teach someone to, say, estimate a linear model or run k-means. I dread the future when the industry decides the right way to put up barriers is by creating ev…

A boot camp probably won't tell the process to make sure a linear model is the right choice. It probably also won't tell you when you should and shouldn't use k-means. And in most cases you probably won't have very good answers as to the certainty of your models.

Imagine you're hiring someone to build a house for you. Would you feel comfortable with someone who's just been drilled on how to use individual tools? I would want someone who had been taught a step by step process for how to put together a house.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#58

Post by mikert5671 »

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

I actually think that machine learning can be much harder than you are claiming here, and that your inexperience is showing when you make such claims. Sure a toy problem from some dataset in a book or pulled off the internet is easy. So is implementing a k-means algorithm. But go to a large corporation with 100 datasets, all with 100 fields each, each having significant seasonal bias (among other biases), and build something that lasts, works, is clean, and is better than someone else can build. You need to convince them to trust you, maybe you can write an algorithm that works, but the business people cant understand that algorithm, and so they have to trust your word.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#59

Post by gaius »

maxxxxx wrote: post #53
make3 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In real life, problems are hard and require theoretical investigation to do well. That's the actual job! The theoretical investigation. Not the programming. The programming is really easy. which is part of why having 15 years in software doesn't have so much weight.

How many data scientists really do theoretical investigation? From what I see not too many. It feels a little like looking only for devs who can write complete operating systems and then having them write CRUD apps.

90% of data science time is spent sourcing and then cleaning the data. 10% is spent preparing and delivering reports to stakeholders. The ML time is a rounding error.

The job in which you are magically given a pristine dataset and can just tweak ML models all day doesn’t exist.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#60

Post by ihsw2 »

gaius wrote: post #19
minimaxir wrote: post #9

Recently I wrote a tweetstorm of my not-so-great experience hunting for a data science job last summer: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/951117788835278848 Despite data science being a hot job, the sheer, growing number of MOOCs available will cause the high amount gatekeeping from many prospective employers to get even worse. I am very happy as a data scientist now, and yes, it's more complicated than doing Exce…

sheer, growing number of MOOCs available will cause the high amount gatekeeping from many prospective employers I did a MOOC, nothing wrong with them. A lot of it turned out to be just revising things I had originally learned in my BEng or MSc, but I learned some things too. And a bit of revision never hurt. I don’t think I had done much calculus “in anger” since graduating for example, so that was rusty. In 5 years…

"Full Stack Developer" will mean everything from heavy front-end dev work to scaling out a monolithic in-house back-end framework into microservices to cobbling together Android/iOS apps to slapping ML on top of it all and calling it a day.

Oh and it will all run on JS.

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