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Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

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Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#131

Post by superhuzza »

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 think you're wrong about the math requirements. The math is not very abstract, but requires a much deeper understanding of statistics than your post suggests. That's probably why you struggled to get hired.

My partner has a successful career in data science, but she has multiple degrees in mathematics - significantly more than your typical engineer is exposed to.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#132

Post by timdellinger »

Mc91 wrote: post #64
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. :(

I know a mid-level manager at a Fortune 100 company. Somewhere up the management chain, someone read an article about how data science is the hot new thing that your company has to be doing or it will have missed the boat. So word was sent down that their next project was to do data science. So now they are launching a data science project to analyze their business data, which this manager is overseeing. They're hiri…

I actually see this as a smart move in the context of a Fortune 100 company. It's often a good idea to build something (in this case, a data science capability) before you need it, so that when you do need it, it's already up and running. Also: there's value in giving any new technology a test drive.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#133

Post by ska »

kitanata wrote: post #87
hellofunk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the skills necessary to succeed in data science, the ability to program is actually the least important. Perhaps you were over-emphasising your software skills at the expense of really demonstrating proper understanding of the science of data analysis. A data science position is not going to require your experience in low-level game programming, for example. In fact, being able to program at all is secondary, sinc…

This right here is a perfect example of why this position is gatekeeped so much. Having a PhD doesn’t automatically mean you think like a scientist of a mathematician, and having a bachelor’s degree and 15 years of experience writing code and then putting in the effort to read Elements of Statistical Learning, compeleting several online courses in machine learning and data science, studying probability, combinatorics…

You are input to a classification routine. The job of those designing the routine is to reduce the false positive rate to as close to 0 as they can without incurring too high a false negative rate.

So this sucks if you don't fit the model well in a way that has you often end up as a false negative - but that doesn't' mean the model is broken.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#134

Post by Puer »

stcredzero wrote: post #128
resolaibohp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my company posted a data science job we received something like 300 applications on the first day. When looking at them most were people with no experience but a fresh degree or bootcamp grad plus all the other people like you who want to change careers from software with portfolios of data science projects. The field is absolutely saturated with people who want to be a data scientist but have no experience. Thi…

The field is absolutely saturated with people who want to be a data scientist but have no experience. This is where some of that gate keeping comes from. What are the data science "gotchas?" A lot of people can pick up basic programming in a weekend, but they wouldn't necessarily know what they don't know and might well get deeply mired in problems with concurrency or algorithmic complexity. It's such "gotchas" which…

I mean, in my graduate ML classes the first "homework" assignment was always just a problem set of probability and distribution questions. They were simple questions, but you'd be surprised how many people dropped the class after that first assignment.

There are a lot of people out there who have memorized how to implement k-means and PCA but would absolutely struggle to understand what they're actually doing or interpret the results in a meaningful way. A HUGE part of being a data scientist is presenting information in a useful way. That's why PhDs are favored because with their experience having to write grants to get funding for their research they're exactly the type of people that can take a naive problem, work it to a result, and then sit in front of a board room of non-technical people and explain why their result was worth the money that was given to them.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#135

Post by gaius »

pc2g4d wrote: post #95
gaius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ability to program is actually the least important The days of a researcher producing a model to be re-implemented for production by a programmer are over, or very nearly so. A working data scientist now is expected to produce something that can run in production. That’s something a PhD doesn’t teach and that many PhDs find an uphill struggle.

What would be examples of such production-ready models? Things written using TensorFlow et al?

If you being paid to research a predictor or a classifier then as soon as you have a model demonstrably better than what’s running in prod, you should be able to just drop it straight into the CICD pipeline and off it goes to make money for your employer - or for you. No more chucking a prototype over the fence to a programming team to rewrite in C++ or Java to make it “prod grade”.

Right now doing this is somewhere between “state of the art” and “new normal” depending on where you sit.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#136

Post by gaius »

mikert5671 wrote: post #119
gaius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"In ten years all programming will be either outsourced or automated..." -everyone in the 90s

When I started in this game, just being able to put up a website made you hot stuff. HTML and CGI were cutting edge. But for a long time now, those skills are totally commoditized. That’s what I mean.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#137

Post by retbull »

sannee wrote: post #35
frockington wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do a linear regression, call it ML with AI and you'll be running your own team in a week

Just the other day, I heard someone talking about a "single layer neural network with no activation"...

y=mx+b :D I won

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#138

Post by sjg007 »

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…

A data scientist is a statistician who programs.. :). That’s the real issue. The gate keepers will be someone with said advanced degree who is filtering for people like them. Ironically that’s a bad way to filter but it happens.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#139

Post by ared38 »

kitanata wrote: post #87
hellofunk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the skills necessary to succeed in data science, the ability to program is actually the least important. Perhaps you were over-emphasising your software skills at the expense of really demonstrating proper understanding of the science of data analysis. A data science position is not going to require your experience in low-level game programming, for example. In fact, being able to program at all is secondary, sinc…

This right here is a perfect example of why this position is gatekeeped so much. Having a PhD doesn’t automatically mean you think like a scientist of a mathematician, and having a bachelor’s degree and 15 years of experience writing code and then putting in the effort to read Elements of Statistical Learning, compeleting several online courses in machine learning and data science, studying probability, combinatorics…

I'm sure you're extremely smart and dedicated -- I've only dreamed of putting in that much work -- but have you considered your mindset might be holding you back? Would you hire someone who had never worked in low-level game programming and didn't have a bachelors but told you "I can do everything you can do"?

If you're serious about getting a PhD-level job without a PhD, getting someone to recommend and vouch for you is even more important than usual. Since you're up to date with papers, why not email researchers you admire with questions that demonstrate you deeply understand their work? Many will be too busy, but some will probably be impressed by your determination. Once you have a relationship, see if you can assist with their research, even if initially it's just grunt work. It will take time, but integrating yourself into the academic "web of trust" and maybe getting your name on some papers is the only plausible way you can expect a company that doesn't know you to take you seriously.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#140

Post by notlob »

peatmoss wrote: post #124
nycthbris wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are seriously underestimating the value of first hand experience conducting scientific research. It beats into you a mindset you can't get anywhere else. There are no books or manuals or docs to read and master it. There's only the scientific method. You start with a question, conduct experiments, analyze results, adjust your hypothesis, and repeat the process. You get very comfortable with saying "I don'…

> You start with a question, conduct experiments, analyze results, adjust your hypothesis, and repeat the process. This is missing my pet step: doing the literature review. I’m pretty ambidextrous when it comes to Python and R, so I’m not typically a combatant in the data science language flamewars. But... for as much as the Python community likes to assert their superior coding chops, I’ve observed that the R commun…

> This is missing my pet step: doing the literature review.

One of the earliest, most important, and most useful lessons I learned from a senior grad student: "a day in the library can be worth a week at the bench."

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