Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye, data science

ryxcommar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 415 posts

Re: Goodbye, data science

#301

Post by satvikpendem »

daydream wrote: post #202
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consequences often catch up slowly. It took years for Elizabeth Holmes to be sentenced because it takes time to collect evidence, build an airtight case, and give people their due process. As I get older, I'm actually noticing more and more consequences catching up with people, albeit slowly. The people I knew who drank heavily through their 20s and 30s are in much worse shape than basically anyone who made an effort…

> Consequences often catch up slowly. Agreed. Few people defy gravity; in the end most hit the ground. The phrase “slowly, then suddenly” comes to mind.

I favorited this comment for showing me a new analogy in your second sentence. I'll have to use that one in the future.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#302

Post by jrochkind1 »

asdff wrote: post #269
jrochkind1 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that meant you did a lot of useless work?

It was more like backlogged maintenance. Like "Ok its too wet to mow today, lets get the backhoe and finally redo the storm drain so it doesn't clog"

So that is maybe different. I think the "60%" we're talking about above, to me, is people doing useless work, or work whose only use is internal "political".

Re: Goodbye, data science

#303

Post by tasuki »

nostrademons wrote: post #182
scottLobster wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Parenting & the public education system is a very artificially constructed bubble designed to reinforce and reward "good" behavior, where "good" is usually defined as "that which makes life easier for my caregivers". That gives kids a falsely inflated sense of how much everything matters: your caregivers want you to mind your behavior, because then they don't have to, even if you would've been perfectly fine playing…

> In real life there's basically one absolute goal, and that's survival. And that's largely assured in developed western countries these days, unless you do something really stupid.

Or just get unlucky: no need to do anything stupid. One can easily die of cancer at 30 and leave a toddler behind.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#304

Post by ericmcer »

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…

Your post mentions how you are surprised you can skate by at work without facing huge consequences for your actions. Most everyone is like you. We are self-centered and worried about our own security, over-analyzing our own problems and barely being aware of others. I don't know if this is a new problem or one as old as humanity.

The Jan 6 riots are possible because again, the Capitol Police weren't ready to lay their careers and lives on the line "cracking skulls" to defend an old building. Most of them probably were taking in the spectacle and thinking about how exciting it will be to recount with their friends/family later.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#305

Post by JoeAltmaier »

tasuki wrote: post #303
nostrademons wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenting & the public education system is a very artificially constructed bubble designed to reinforce and reward "good" behavior, where "good" is usually defined as "that which makes life easier for my caregivers". That gives kids a falsely inflated sense of how much everything matters: your caregivers want you to mind your behavior, because then they don't have to, even if you would've been perfectly fine playing…

> In real life there's basically one absolute goal, and that's survival. And that's largely assured in developed western countries these days, unless you do something really stupid. Or just get unlucky: no need to do anything stupid. One can easily die of cancer at 30 and leave a toddler behind.

Well, not so easily. The chances per-capita are in the sub-percent range at 30.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#306

Post by coupdejarnac »

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…

The owner at a boutique engineering firm I worked for told me that in a large corporation the best thing you can do is massively fuck up at the beginning. Everybody would learn about you and then eventually forget what you did wrong. The extra bit of notoriety would help with name recognition and people would think you're a "good guy".

Re: Goodbye, data science

#307

Post by rgavuliak »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #178
samvher wrote: post #6

> Nobody knew or even cared what the difference was between good and bad data science work. Meaning you could absolutely suck at your job or be incredible at it and you’d get nearly the same regards in either case. In my experience it's even a little bit worse than that. Approaches that are wrong from a statistics point of view are more likely to generate impressive seeming results. But the flaws are often subtle. A…

I’ve always disliked how data science was positioned within companies as well, it’s outside the critical path of product and engineering, which means it becomes a mere abstraction to management (e.g. “throw that problem to the data science team and see what they come up with”), resulting in very vague and abstract requirements and, hence, deliverables. I think there is huge value in the discipline and technologies, b…

Yeah, as a Data Science manager I've experienced this pain a lot (not part of the critical path). I am now an Engineering Manager that works with a cross-functional team including FE/BE/DS/Devops and it's the most power I ever had to put Data Science in front of our clients in a meaningful way.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#308

Post by andmikey »

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.

Yeah, I wish I'd had "free time" in college. 60-70 hour work weeks were normal - 20 hours a week in class and then a full-time load of courseworks / readings / labs etc. I couldn't afford to take time off on weekends for the first 3.5 years. It was horrendous.

Once I started full-time work it was like a revelation - finally I don't have to work on evenings and weekends! I actually get free time to myself! I can have hobbies!

Re: Goodbye, data science

#309

Post by FridgeSeal »

I relate to this so much. I have experienced the same things, and I also find myself moving across to data engineering.

In my case, I was in organisations that wanted data science, but had no capability or interest in supporting the role, so a lot of my time and effort has been having to put down the data science tools, and learn devops, software development and data engineering so that I can get back to the point where I do my data science work.

I’ve also become frustrated with my data science peers lack of knowledge about the surrounding fields- I get that being a top tier software dev isn’t the primary responsibility of a DS, but it would certainly make their life, and the life of everyone around them a lot easier if they did make an effort. There’s a sense of “learned helplessness” in parts of data science (and parts of data engineering too) in which “if some third-party tool can’t do it for us, we just can’t do it” and imagination is limited to the features the latest framework de jour offers.

Re: Goodbye, data science

#310

Post by Reebz »

>The work is downstream of engineering, product, and office politics, meaning the work was only often as good as the weakest link in that chain.

>The work was often very low value-add to the business (often compensating for incompetence up the management chain).

The chain is what is important. This is not a data science specific issue.

Swap in or rearrange any team names to the original list and the last position or two will find this article true.

Post reply on HN