I don't hear a lot about "data science" anymore. And judging from the shrinking number of job postings, I suspect it was a bit overhyped a few years ago. What do you think?
Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
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Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#2I work for one of the major bootcamps and I can tell you that interest has significantly declined over the past 1 year. The market for data science has indeed shrunk. The reason? I'm not sure, could be that it didn't live up to the hype.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#3Over the past several months I keep seeing people trying to equate data science with machine learning, and it made me wonder if the people doing this are trying to salvage (or perhaps enhance) the investment they made in data science by trying to blur the lines between the two.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#4We're passed the early peak of the hype cycle, but now the marketers have calmed down the real world applications are maturing.
If you think of Data Science as AI sure, but if you frame it as applied statistics + good software engineering practices + cloud scale I think things are in a good place.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#5I work on a data science team that's growing pretty aggressively. I also frequently hear from recruiters hiring at companies big and small for analyst and scientist positions.
I'm not sure what it would mean for days science to be "just hype." I see DS work on this website alone all the time.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#6I think what companies really want is smart generalists with advanced math, programming, and modeling skills coupled with domain knowledge. That skill set will always carry high value in technical companies.
The reason it carries value is the skills are difficult to acquire. I think the recent decline in interest reflects the rise of new data science candidates that are taking the path of least resistance to a career in data science. Rather than pursuing problem solving, people are pursuing "data science" which is a nebulous term in and of itself.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#7We're passed the early peak of the hype cycle, but now the marketers have calmed down the real world applications are maturing. If you think of Data Science as AI sure, but if you frame it as applied statistics + good software engineering practices + cloud scale I think things are in a good place.
This. Any good data science person needs to understand how distributed systems work. They need to be decent at applied statistics. I think an average engineering grad can easily work with simple statistics they learn in Linear algebra and intro to ML. The good software engineering part is what has been brought on in the last few years.
I once saw some code written by a "data scientist". The overall code was non-complex, but the Java/Scala code was the worst of my nightmare. Additionally, I think other engineers have also matured enough to understand that underneath the veneer of data science, the fundamentals do not change much.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#8There's a lot of hype in software. Just like you were hearing about Blockchain startups only when Bitcoin started trading at 5 bazillion USD and now you don't hear nearly as much about it. During 2008-2015ish we went through an insane churn of new JavaScript frameworks and NoSQL database hype.
Yeah it seems to have calmed, but I don't think data science was just hype because it comes from (and somewhat is) probability and statistics, and the rate of data/information that's being produced by and extracted from people seems to be ever increasing. But it absolutely was prone to a hype cycle as with almost anything else in tech. IMO this is a phenomenon exacerbated by venture capital.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#9The hype was that you could take a huge pile of data and turn it into hugely valuable insights.
The realization is that any random pile of data likely doesn't have anything in it that is worth paying for: Here's our analysis! We already do/knew that.
Some people have really good, valuable data sets. Most people don't.
Re: Ask HN: Was data science just hype?
#10There's a lot of hype in software. Just like you were hearing about Blockchain startups only when Bitcoin started trading at 5 bazillion USD and now you don't hear nearly as much about it. During 2008-2015ish we went through an insane churn of new JavaScript frameworks and NoSQL database hype. Yeah it seems to have calmed, but I don't think data science was just hype because it comes from (and somewhat is) probabilit…
I'm a "data scientist" and couldn't agree more. There are a lot of companies that benefit from hyping emerging tech and careers to a point of saturation, these include bootcamps, consulting firms and service providers. The market has calmed but I wouldn't say it was just hype (obviously I'm biased!)