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Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

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Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#1

Post by legobridge »

I'm still pretty early in my career, which I started as a software developer. I transitioned into a data scientist role about a year ago, then moved to the USA for a Master's degree in AI/DS.

Here I'm seeing a trend of software developers being paid better than data scientists in general, and I was wondering if I've made a mistake transitioning away from software development. The number of opportunities also seem to be dwindling (or maybe I'm not looking well enough, please feel free to correct me).

My question is this: Did all the talk of data science being the "sexiest" job cause the market to become saturated, or is it still a viable career path?

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#2

Post by sebg »

> Is the industry saturated with data scientists already? No :)

> Did all the talk of data science being the "sexiest" job cause the market to become saturated No :)

> is it still a viable career path? Yes

Source:

a) I Co-run the Data Science Weekly newsletter.

b) I was a mod of https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/ from 15k to 30k members and people were asking that about 5 to 6 years ago. The sub now has ~829k members and that question still comes up.

> The number of opportunities also seem to be dwindling The reason for this is that initial it was "data science", then it was "data science and machine learning researcher", then it was "data science and data engineerings and machine learning researcher", then it was "ai, data scientists, machine learning researcher, machine learning engineering, data engineer, nlp", etc. So the jobs have multiplied but so have the position titles as well. So while you could just search for data scientist positions before you now have to get a bit more specific.

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#3

Post by dkqmduems »

sebg wrote: post #2

> Is the industry saturated with data scientists already? No :) > Did all the talk of data science being the "sexiest" job cause the market to become saturated No :) > is it still a viable career path? Yes Source: a) I Co-run the Data Science Weekly newsletter. b) I was a mod of https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/ from 15k to 30k members and people were asking that about 5 to 6 years ago. The sub now has ~829k memb…

This is a non answer.

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#4

Post by MontyCarloHall »

To be blunt, the market is saturated with people who call themselves “data scientists” but are actually just reasonably skilled software engineers with at best a college sophomore level understanding of math/stats.

On the other hand, the market is nowhere near saturation for people with both advanced software engineering and math/stats skills (i.e. PhD-level).

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#5

Post by ffssffss »

I think it's less a case of saturation and more a case of companies realizing that most data scientists don't actually deliver value commensurate to the salaries they were asking. Most companies simply don't have enough data, or don't have hygienic enough data, or don't have the engineering heft to build a reliable data pipeline, so the data scientists often find themselves set up to fail. I've seen that happen a few times.

But, it's not like the fundamentals of the field are wrong. Predictive modeling is still really useful. It's just larger firms are the only ones capable of realizing that value.

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#6

Post by dinkumthinkum »

It seems like you we’re just chasing by trends. Trends don’t matter that much for an individual. If you focus on being an expert in something that is valuable at all then you should valuable. Trying to mom-max your career based on Gartner or something like that isn’t generally optimal for individuals.

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#7

Post by sage76 »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #4

To be blunt, the market is saturated with people who call themselves “data scientists” but are actually just reasonably skilled software engineers with at best a college sophomore level understanding of math/stats. On the other hand, the market is nowhere near saturation for people with both advanced software engineering and math/stats skills (i.e. PhD-level).

Just out of curiosity, is there a way for someone to show off those skills if they don't have a PhD?

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#8

Post by peatfreak »

sebg wrote: post #2

> Is the industry saturated with data scientists already? No :) > Did all the talk of data science being the "sexiest" job cause the market to become saturated No :) > is it still a viable career path? Yes Source: a) I Co-run the Data Science Weekly newsletter. b) I was a mod of https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/ from 15k to 30k members and people were asking that about 5 to 6 years ago. The sub now has ~829k memb…

> a) I Co-run the Data Science Weekly newsletter.

Is the newsletter still running? I looked at the archive on the website and I didn't see anything more recent than April 2022.

Re: Ask HN: Is the industry saturated with data scientists already?

#9

Post by ProjectArcturis »

Anecdotally, as a Principal Data Scientist, I'm getting a lot less recruiter spam than I did a year ago. Though I think that's probably something that's affecting everything in tech as the industry as a whole takes their foot off the gas.

At the entry level, I'm sure there's more competition for fewer spots.

I think the new generative AI models are absolute game-changers and will only get better. If I were starting out, I'd focus there.

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