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Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

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Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#131

Post by GianFabien »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #20
ghoshbishakh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think degree is important? I am trying to finish my PhD. But I don't want to stay in academia after I finish. Would my degree be helpful in getting any SWE jobs?

It depends on how far out you are. Finishing what you start is always a "good" sign. That's what a lot of people look for. With the OP, he's 4 months away from finishing his degree. In the grand scheme of life, that's a "blink of an eye". There is no point not to, and (I don't agree with this at all) people judge you differently if you have a degree vs. not.

In most goal-setting advice, Steve Jobs comes to mind, having a reputation for being a finisher is the most valuable attribute.

Employers basically hire staff to get stuff done. The rest is details about specialization, experience, skill-set, etc. All of which is rendered irrelevant if you don't get the jobs you are assigned done.

Re: a PhD -- ideally you should ask the question why you want one is before you start. Cursory research quickly reveals that academia as a career track is very challenging. You don't need a PhD to be a great SWE. A PhD is training to be a researcher and an expert in a specific field.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#132

Post by ghoshbishakh »

captaincaveman wrote: post #32
ghoshbishakh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think degree is important? I am trying to finish my PhD. But I don't want to stay in academia after I finish. Would my degree be helpful in getting any SWE jobs?

I think it will help you get roles, I don't think it actually helps in doing the job, and in my personal experience has a negative correlation with being a good software engineer (not necessarily on skill, more on delivering what's actually needed).

The negative correlation is because how most PhDs do not focus on SWE skills isn't it? But that group are probably not interested in coming to SWE either.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#133

Post by happy_path »

Congrats, you're better than most university students I know!

Being so much close to getting your degree, get it! You are almost there!

Besides, when you have your degree you're going to be above your (average) peer because of your real-world experience in Data Science.

If you can continue working and get your degree that would be superb. Once you have 1 year of experience, I think you could search for much better jobs.

My advice here would be to try to move your career path to Machine Learning Engineering. It is a relatively-new mixed-discipline, mostly SWE with some DS and DevOps. There is a coursera course that treats these topics, take a look to it once you have your degree [1]. There is also need for backend engineers with some DS skills. Try to learn Django/Flask/NodeJS/Go and with your DS experience, you're good to go.

Also, get out of Russia as soon as you get the degree and also, get the EU passport as fast as you can. The political situation is going to deteriorate in the following months. In fact, I would try to immigrate to the EU once you have your degree.

Advice for your future job searchs: Do not get un-motivated or depressed because of not passing the interviews (not I don't use the term "fail"). Most positions are already assigned and the rest of the interviews are a way to avoid nepotism claims or other criticism (or even legal repercussions). You won't pass 90% of your interviews, not because of your skill-set, but because there are a miriad of reasons for you to don't be chosen: another candidate is better/asks for less money, position is canceled, HR don't click with you, etc. Don't get discouraged and assume you're going to have to make many interviews to get a position, that's the game (unless you have FAANG experience), I'm afraid.

Good luck and keep rocking!

[1] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-en...

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#134

Post by sarusso »

dvtrn wrote: post #90
sarusso wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Pretty strong opinions here. Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. Instead, leaving for writing code just because you can tells me that you took the short path, and that your missing basics (the real ones, which teaches you University) will knock at your door some day. My 2 cents.

Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. So does a lot of other valuable and still relevant lived experiences, and they come without the price tag. But we all already know that.

Sure, if you include the price in the equation then this makes things different, you are right. I got biased by the nearly free University we get in Europe.

However, if you start something, I think that it is a good attitude to finish it, provided that you don't face major practical/financial issues along the way.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#135

Post by sarusso »

cinntaile wrote: post #61
sarusso wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Pretty strong opinions here. Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. Instead, leaving for writing code just because you can tells me that you took the short path, and that your missing basics (the real ones, which teaches you University) will knock at your door some day. My 2 cents.

> Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. Not completing a degree doesn't mean you can't so this statement doesn't tell us all that much.

Not sure. As I said in the other reply, if you don't finish it, provided that you don't face major practical or financial issues, to me it is a red flag on being able to commit and bring something to conclusion.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#136

Post by sarusso »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #110
sarusso wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Pretty strong opinions here. Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. Instead, leaving for writing code just because you can tells me that you took the short path, and that your missing basics (the real ones, which teaches you University) will knock at your door some day. My 2 cents.

I don't want developers who continue doing something even when it's blatantly the wrong thing to be doing. Flunking out of university is not the "short path". It's the hard path. Getting a degree is not difficult, or even hard work. It's the easy choice - the thing everyone expects you to do. I don't want people who follow orders and do what they're told. I want people who are prepared to make hard decisions, take th…

I think we are just talking about two different things, and that you have in mind "coders" and "developers", not software engineers or data scientists. But the OP was talking about the latter, not the first, where I can to some extent agree with you.

I saw it many times: javascript kids or self-taught backend Python "engineers" falling extremely short when it came to scalability, algorithmic complexity, or just abstracting concepts.

Similarly, I saw several self-claimed "data scientists" not even knowing what a non gaussian error distribution means.

Not knowing this stuff jeopardise your work and the projects you are working in.

Then, if you are telling me that your interview process should spot these shortcomings at the same level a university degree can, then to me this sounds a bit unrealistic.

However, if you need someone that can write code to pass the unit-tests that some one else wrote without taking any architectural decision, than OK I can agree with you, but it does not sound much of an appealing career path IMO.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#137

Post by captaincaveman »

ghoshbishakh wrote: post #132
captaincaveman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will help you get roles, I don't think it actually helps in doing the job, and in my personal experience has a negative correlation with being a good software engineer (not necessarily on skill, more on delivering what's actually needed).

The negative correlation is because how most PhDs do not focus on SWE skills isn't it? But that group are probably not interested in coming to SWE either.

In my experience its because they are more interested in researching interesting things, rather than delivering the project/task they are assigned to. Basically jump down every rabbit hole they can find!

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#138

Post by suifbwish »

saalweachter wrote: post #8

Firstly, finish your degree. For most employers, just checking off the degree is more important than exactly what it is. This is especially true for software engineering. You will have many, many coworkers who have degrees in physics or bioinformatics or mathematics and work as SWEs. Most of their stories will be exactly the same as yours, although "...but there weren't any good paying jobs so..." will be in the runn…

A lot of startups are starving for people who have experience even if they don’t have a degree. I’ve worked with compsci PhDs that spent hours/days doing something that 3 years of experience in a heavy industry will teach you to do in a few minutes using a different method or more tools. Sure advanced degrees are needed for some frontier type things but in practicality they have very little up on someone who is passionate with coding and has worked with veterans in several companies.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#139

Post by cinntaile »

sarusso wrote: post #135
cinntaile wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Completing a degree means you can commit and deliver, IMO. Not completing a degree doesn't mean you can't so this statement doesn't tell us all that much.

Not sure. As I said in the other reply, if you don't finish it, provided that you don't face major practical or financial issues, to me it is a red flag on being able to commit and bring something to conclusion.

As it stands it's a theory of yours. Now you need some actual data to back it up. It's a bit dangerous to reach conclusions based on a hunch, you might be biased after all.

Re: Ask HN: I realise data science is not for me and feel depressed

#140

Post by saalweachter »

suifbwish wrote: post #138
saalweachter wrote: post #8

Firstly, finish your degree. For most employers, just checking off the degree is more important than exactly what it is. This is especially true for software engineering. You will have many, many coworkers who have degrees in physics or bioinformatics or mathematics and work as SWEs. Most of their stories will be exactly the same as yours, although "...but there weren't any good paying jobs so..." will be in the runn…

A lot of startups are starving for people who have experience even if they don’t have a degree. I’ve worked with compsci PhDs that spent hours/days doing something that 3 years of experience in a heavy industry will teach you to do in a few minutes using a different method or more tools. Sure advanced degrees are needed for some frontier type things but in practicality they have very little up on someone who is passi…

It's more that if the only thing stopping you is that you've realized you want to work in a different field[0] then while getting that degree may not be necessary or even useful for itself, it does just make a lot of things easier and more straight forward further down the line.

Any time you have a situation where people are filtering large number of candidates impersonally, from hiring to immigration to dating apps, some of the time you'll be blocked for not having a college degree.

Sure, you can find plenty of start-ups or other smaller shops to apply to; maybe you'd even prefer to work for people who can see past a degree or lack thereof. If your life falls out that you can't get a degree or just have better options on the table than starting or finishing a degree-granting program, it's not the end of the world, you have plenty of options and opportunity. But it's still probably worthwhile to keep all the options you can if it's relatively little extra cost.

[0] If you're epsilon away from completion, if you've already paid for your final semester, if you're not in actual danger from staying in the program, if you don't need to get a job yesterday because you've run out of runway for living expenses, etc etc.

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