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I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

refinery29.com

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Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#41

Post by rootusrootus »

bdcravens wrote: post #19
samstave wrote: post #11

So I left my 'typical' role type for a massive paycut due to being done with working in SF and Silicon Valley for something I am passionate about. I turned down a job at $180,000 and took a job at $52,000. (previous to that I was making $228,000 - as a consultant) Because I have literally no passion for what I used to do, the ageism, cut-throat bullshit in silicon valley has quite a toll. Housing is retarded. Transpo…

There's a lot of jobs outside of that bubble that pay well. I won't disclose my numbers, but I have no reasons to go elsewhere, I'm 42, I'm able to work with the languages and tools I want, and I live in Houston and work from home pretty much whenever I want.

Totally agree. I live in Portland and the attitude is much more relaxed, but I make well above the typical SV salary. I get to choose my technologies, work from home when I want, my company has no interest in anyone working more than 40 hours a week, etc. I'm sure I could make a bit more with the right job at the right company in SV, but the quality of life here is so good that I won't even consider it.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#42

Post by paulpauper »

There's not much content to work with here. Her success runs counter to the prevailing media narrative that young people are always broke and struggling. Yes, many are, but many are not, especially in STEM fields. The short-term inconvenience in exchange for making a lot of money (especially if one keeps expenses low) makes it worthwhile in the long-run by being able to retire sooner. 10 years in a high-paying job that is not one's passion beats 40+ years n a low-paying job and never having enough to retire. Her parents paying for most of her college helped a lot, but so does a high IQ to get a good paying job as she did.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#43

Post by dasil003 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #14

Idk if real world engineering is often about passion. Who is passionate about legacy code, constantly changing design requirements and live site issues/on call? I love to build things but at the end of the day it's more of a job than it is a passion project.

Yeah, passion is overused recruiter-speak. Sure it's nice for cheerleading if everyone feels passionate about their job, but it's really just short-hand for being engaged and focused which is orthogonal to passion.

There is however something which I believe software engineers need: an innate desire to understand how things work, and a tenacity to debug them when they don't. If you don't have this internal drive, then you'll never get over the hump of the vast background knowledge you need to be a productive programmer in any interesting job.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#44

Post by pawelmurias »

baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

Less bullshit majors seems like a very good thing.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#45

Post by BowBun »

pawelmurias wrote: post #44
baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

Less bullshit majors seems like a very good thing.

Science gives us answers. Culture gives us meaning.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#46

Post by notbob »

baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

That QZ article gets a lot wrong. In particular:

> if the tech bubble bursts, computer science may even be riskier than a humanities degree, which gives graduates a broader set of knowledge.

How do humanities degrees provide "broader knowledge" than CS degrees? Different, sure, but broader?

Good CS degrees are not coding bootcamps. CS students take a lot of mathematics and logic-heavy courses and can easily pivot from programming to jobs in insurance, finance, accounting, education, project management, and even law.

Good CS degrees also require a lot of technical writing, which opens up all of the stuff that's usually associated with humanities degrees.

Bad CS degrees exist. But then, so do bad English departments.

This also ignores the fact that a lot of CS students are taking courses in English/poli sci/History/etc, but very few humanities students are taking CS courses. E.g., I didn't have a major or minor in any of the above fields, but I took upper-division courses in the English, Relgiion, poli sci, and history departments. However, I only ever encountered one non-STEM major in CS courses beyond CS 101.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#47

Post by metildaa »

baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

For society it is not good to have a dearth of skilled writers, historians & teachers, but for the individual they don't want to end up with no job or a crappy $35k a year job in the middle of nowhere.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#48

Post by ilikehurdles »

asaph wrote: post #12
paxys wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am now working at a tech startup This would explain the salary

Is there an equity component in addition to the base salary?

Yes, it’s 4500 stock options worth $0 each. Pretty generous. Other startups of that size are lucky to get you 1500 stock options at $0 each.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#49

Post by samstave »

joncrane wrote: post #34
not_a_moth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-something here, we get it too, or people in late 20s anyways. I recently quit a $220k job to pursue a passion startup. I can at least say this: 3 months in and the health metrics I track are significantly better - sleep, heart rate, HRV, blood glucose, and inflammation markers. While it's a great stepping stone for gaining skills and credentials, there's really nothing "high status" about being an employee for som…

How do you track those markers?

Apple watch?

I want to know this as well.

I need a mobile blood-pressure monitor.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#50

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Link to original post: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/six-figure-paycheck-data-sc... (Edit: URL fixed) The real question is that $125k as a Senior Data Analyst in NYC seems low. > I have this creative side, which comes in handy when thinking through challenging problems, but there is only so much creativity that I can use when in data analysis. This I disagree with; in data analysis/science, there's more than way t…

>"I analyze data on a day-to-day basis, which means building dashboards or writing code to summarize various datasets. I usually partner up with teams across the company to solve different problems. That sometimes means defining metrics, creating visualizations to see changes over time, or making sense of the large datasets that we have."

Sounds like mostly dashboarding, data viz, and simple analysis, so I actually thought it was kinda high. Perfect for senior maybe.

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