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Goodbye, data science

ryxcommar.com

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Re: Goodbye, data science

#211

Post by quickthrower2 »

angry_moose wrote: post #72

In a recent past life, I was a HPC (high performance computing) administrator for a mid size company (just barely S&P400) who was in the transportation industry, so I had a lot of interactions with the "data science" team and it was just a fascinating delusion to watch. Our CTO did the "Quick, this is the future! I'll be fired if I don't hop on this trend" panic thing and picked up a handful of recent grads and gave…

Not the first HN comment I have seen where $real_useful_department borrows resources off overfunded $bullshit_department to get the job done inspite of management.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#212

Post by bo1024 »

noelsusman wrote: post #98
adamsmith143 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are these jobs where you can interview this badly and still get hired because in my experience DS interviews are extremely hard and often expect people to have very high Stats skills as well as Data Structures/Algo skills at FAANG level.

It's different at a lot of non-tech companies. I'm in the nonprofit world and my interview barely had any technical component at all.

To be able to tell whether a candidate is good, the hiring team has to be expert! No chicken, no egg.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#213

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ketzo wrote: post #165
fnands wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a bit of a joke that a data scientist is someone who can do better stats then the average SWE and can write better code than the average statistician. Both of those are relatively low bars to clear though

The way I heard the joke was "a data scientist is someone who's not good enough at math to be a statistician, and not good enough at programming to be a software engineer." Maybe a little harsh...

That's much better. Consider that stolen.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#215

Post by r-zip »

csimon80 wrote: post #86

It's so buzz word heavy. I had a manager that wanted me to solve a problem using the monte-carlo method when it fact the problem had a closed form solution...

Why do math on paper when you can write code and look cool (and not like a useless academic)?

Re: Goodbye, data science

#216

Post by lrc »

scottLobster wrote: post #156
_jx7j wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meaning you could absolutely suck at your job or be incredible at it and you’d get nearly the same regards in either case. One of the things I don't like about statements like this said in a Data Science context, is that they are true outside of Data Science as well. Executives make big decisions, managers make smaller decisions, nobody can evaluate how good/bad they really were for months or years. Engineers build…

Not to get too off topic, but as a 35 year old engineer it seems the world in general has far fewer consequences than I was raised to expect. Everything from businesses with bullshit ideas flourishing at a loss, to January 6 even being possible (politics aside I expected the Capitol Police to crack a lot more skulls than they did once people started smashing windows), to the whole FTX situation and the tepid response…

My own thought (I know there is a great deal of room for disagreement) is that the J6 crowd saw no consequences for the attempts to obstruct the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation and thought the rules had changed. One of them was shot in the neck, many others are still incarcerated two years later despite a clear constitutional right to a speedy trial. I'd rather the Capitol Police had just cracked heads at this point. You might think one protest was more justified than another, but the differential in response works to dissolve confidence in the fair application of the law. At any rate, the participants in J6 have been broken, so you're not likely to seen that again...yet I feel we could get another riot season provoked by police brutality at any time.

There is garbage and tent encampments thoughout much of my city, and I am told that nothing can be done about it. I've been invited to engrave something on my catalytic converter. I wonder what good that would do.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#217

Post by fumeux_fume »

I have to agree with the author on all of the points he makes here. My projects with the most impact typically had a stronger data engineering and software engineering contribution from my team than data science. Data scientists today are what surgeons were in the 1700s. Hard for people to tell the difference between the good ones, the bad ones and the charlatans.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#218

Post by r-zip »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #99

I've never met a data scientist who could do anything more than basic statistics combined with the Python skills of a fifth grader (that's probably insulting to today's fifth graders tho). I honestly have no idea what they're supposed to be doing or why they're paid so much money. Pay a high school junior for the same and get better work. And where's the scientific method? Where's the experiments and rigor?

> where's the scientific method? Where's the experiments and rigor?

No time for that, buddy. CXOs need results, ASAP! (This was basically the attitude of my managers at the last place I worked).

Re: Goodbye, data science

#219

Post by andrewnc »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #134
mynameisash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My title is still software engineer, but I effectively do data engineering, and I work closely with data scientists. I love a lot of it, but there's still plenty of bullshit to deal with. Just in the technical side, dealing with Python is a perpetual gong show, and most of my team's work seems to revolve around configuration of secrets and K8s. I'm fortunate to be the guy that nerds out about performant code, so when…

You wrote: > What does this mean?

I think "The Gong Show" was an old tv show about amateur talents. Sometimes good, most of the time terrible and hilariously unaware. Not sure if that was what was intended here.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#220

Post by bo1024 »

boringg wrote: post #115
Davertron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well good luck then, in my experience the most free time I've ever had in my life was during college. I squandered massive amounts of that time doing things completely unrelated to education, and I definitely don't regret doing that. College isn't just about book learning after all. But still, BY FAR, college is the time of my life when I had the most free time to do whatever I wanted.

My sense is that your program at school had a light work load - so a difference in experience. My peak workload so far in my life was at college - I had over 40 hours of class time a week which you then have to add on homework, projects and exams. It was a grind. Since then workload has been intense of course but never comparable. I've had much more time to be able to explore personal interests since college.

That's at least 3 times a normal amount of class time in the U.S. at places such as Ivy League colleges, MIT, etc.
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