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

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

#31

Post by jstx1 »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #27

The problem with the Data Scientist market is that Data Scientist is a fuzzy definition. It's pretty clear what skillset makes a good software engineer, but nearly anyone can call themselves a Data Scientist, even if they just clicking around in Excel. This has resulted in these bootcamps and certifications that "make you a Data Scientist in 14 days" - now everyone with minimal qualifications can apply for Data Scien…

> But then don't call yourself Data Scientist because that puts you into the same low-barrier camp as all the others. From my own experience it's a clear resume red flag: Almost anyone that market themselves as primarily a "Data Scientist" has little technical skills.

How do you imagine the specifics here? Let's say that you have the technical skills, and come across and meaningful, technically challenging job that you like and the job title is data scientist - do you not take the job because of the title? Or do you lie about what your title is in the future?

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

#32

Post by shankr »

faangiq wrote: post #23

Data science is a fake field and a fake career. Used Excel once? Congrats you’re a data scientist.

Working as a data scientist for last 8 years and have never used excel. Only time I had to open an excel with data was when some company sent me their data in an excel for take home assignment. At least send me a csv! I never bothered to finish that task.

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

#33

Post by 1attice »

Call this the 'Electrician Cycle'.

A job is initially incredibly sexy, risky, and newfangled, requiring knowledge that is not widespread. Like being an electrician in 1922.

There are no standards, and because everyone is therefore effectively trading on reputation, salaries are high, for the same reason that Heinz ketchup costs more than Kroger: the brand carries the value.

The job eventually becomes normalized. As part of normalization, the delta in quality between the highest and lowest earners becomes much smaller. If the industry becomes regulated, this gap narrows further. Consequently, salaries fall at the high end of the profession.

Eventually, being an electrician in 2022 is roughly as sexy as being a plumber in 2022, and both are approximately as sexy as being a plumber in 1922.

We've already seen this cycle consume web development and what used to be called system administration -- two positions which were HoT Sh_T in 1995, but are increasingly generic office jobs in 2022.

This cycle will eventually consume every technical field, a kind of sociological eutrophication, but the good news is, it starts fresh with each new gyre.

The bad news is, it happens faster with each gyre, because of the 'complexity ratchet'. You'd think the ever-increasing complexity of technical fields would slow down the cycle! But no -- the human capacity for knowing and valuing is fixed; so the complexity ratchet just means that the social-value cache gets flushed more often.

Data scientists are just plumbers from 2052

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

#34

Post by DantesKite »

I'm not familiar with the current job market, but data scientists being paid worse than developers is surprising to me considering the StackOverflow 2021 survey (in the US):

Median Salary | Job Title

------------|----------------

$177,500 | Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.)

$165,000 | Engineering manager

$150,000 | Engineer, site reliability

$135,000 | DevOps specialist

$133,000 | Developer, back-end

$130,000 | Product manager

$129,250 | Engineer, data

$128,000 | Developer, game or graphics

$127,500 | Marketing or sales professional

$125,000 | Data scientist or machine learning specialist

$120,000 | Developer, desktop or enterprise applications

$120,000 | Developer, embedded applications or devices

$120,000 | Developer, full-stack

$120,000 | Developer, mobile

$120,000 | Scientist

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#work-salary

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

#35

Post by mturmon »

listenallyall wrote: post #20
mturmon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a data science hiring manager. Other things besides just the raw academic credential (a PhD which wouldn't typically be in "Data Science" anyway, i.e., even the PhD's are just Data-Science-adjacent) are publications, conference appearances/posters, generated data products/pipelines, and contributions to relevant software. (For me, in that approximate order.) I'd work on building some of those, because you do need…

> the market is nowhere near saturation Need to show > publications, conference appearances/posters, generated data products/pipelines, and contributions to relevant software. These appear to be in conflict. If companies need people with such skills, they can't just hope to get the elite few who present at conferences, they need to be hiring among the audience members as well. If they are in fact just hiring the spea…

> are publications AND/OR conference appearances/posters AND/OR generated data products/pipelines AND/OR contributions to relevant software. (For me, in that approximate order.)

^--- Taps sign

The above does not imply that I'd only consider conference speakers, right? (Although, there are a lot of conferences!) For some roles, contributions to relevant software would be the right standard.

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

#36

Post by aborsy »

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).

You don’t need any complicated mathematics to plot analytic charts or similar.

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

#37

Post by listenallyall »

mturmon wrote: post #35
listenallyall wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the market is nowhere near saturation Need to show > publications, conference appearances/posters, generated data products/pipelines, and contributions to relevant software. These appear to be in conflict. If companies need people with such skills, they can't just hope to get the elite few who present at conferences, they need to be hiring among the audience members as well. If they are in fact just hiring the spea…

> are publications AND/OR conference appearances/posters AND/OR generated data products/pipelines AND/OR contributions to relevant software. (For me, in that approximate order.) ^--- Taps sign The above does not imply that I'd only consider conference speakers, right? (Although, there are a lot of conferences!) For some roles, contributions to relevant software would be the right standard.

I consolidated for brevity's sake, how could you not realize that. You are still talking about only considering the 1-3% (of conference speakers, article publishers, contributors to popular repos, pipeline generators) not the other 97-99% of audience members, article readers, users of those repos, pipeline consumers.

Is that clearer? Same exact point. Tap tap.

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

#38

Post by 0x008 »

It is more a case of companies hiring drivers and then realizing they need to pave the roads first in order for them to get to a destination in a meaningful amount of time. However, paving “data roads” seems to be quite a tough problem, hence the success of companies that promise to deliver that (such as Palantir or Snowflake)
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