Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#61

Post by aje403 » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

The average CS student didn't do that great in LA/Calc. Most CS programs don't require vector calc. At an average uni, the vector calc class/linear algebra will be extremely forgiving and you really don't need to understand the material. I don't think any undergrad CS program in the country teaches enough statistics and probability to understand some of the harder latent models or generative modeling. The math can get arbitrarily hard enough where a lot of decently ranked universities don't even teach the classes required to understand some papers, but that's overkill. An Udacity gold star isn't really a replacement for that either.

So basically, people like you are a huge risk for a company. You really can't prove you have anything more than a practical ability to use the algorithms. Most algorithms are hard to implement from scratch (robustly, let alone correctly), and you would be doing so by reading papers you have a scant understanding of..

I'd bet a large sum of money 2/3 of the candidates applying for a machine learning role without a PhD could not even provide any derivation of OLS or something like that if it came up in an interview.

Incoming downvote train, choo choo

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#62

Post by gaius » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

ihsw2 wrote: post #60

gaius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sheer, growing number of MOOCs available will cause the high amount gatekeeping from many prospective employers I did a MOOC, nothing wrong with them. A lot of it turned out to be just revising things I had originally learned in my BEng or MSc, but I learned some things too. And a bit of revision never hurt. I don’t think I had done much calculus “in anger” since graduating for example, so that was rusty. In 5 years…

"Full Stack Developer" will mean everything from heavy front-end dev work to scaling out a monolithic in-house back-end framework into microservices to cobbling together Android/iOS apps to slapping ML on top of it all and calling it a day. Oh and it will all run on JS.

See http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/11/07/which-full-stack-de...

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#63

Post by chestervonwinch » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

For what it's worth, I do have a PhD in math with research in machine learning, and I still had a hard time getting calls back. To be fair to myself, I'm speaking from my experience of grad-school-to-industry transition, and the lack of industry experience is a likely big reason for not getting as many calls back as I had anticipated.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#64

Post by Mc91 » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #8

Recruiter here. Data Science is one of ~3 roles I generally don't recruit for. Not because Data Scientists are super hard to find, but more because companies seem to all want data scientists and all want them to do completely different things and none of them really understand those things. Makes for a pretty lame hiring experience unfortunately. :(

I know a mid-level manager at a Fortune 100 company. Somewhere up the management chain, someone read an article about how data science is the hot new thing that your company has to be doing or it will have missed the boat. So word was sent down that their next project was to do data science. So now they are launching a data science project to analyze their business data, which this manager is overseeing. They're hiring data scientists and all that entails. It doesn't come from a business requirement or some organically generated need, top management just wants to be able to say their company is using data science if they're asked about it.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#65

Post by cup-of-tea » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

You're right, it's not that hard. A lot of the gatekeeping is because the departments are run by nontechnical people who just don't understand your skill set. They also need to guard the bullshit and not let anyone realise it's just really shoddy programming at the end of the day.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#66

Post by prions » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

Saying ML is "just linear algebra and calculus" is a gross simplification.

As a dev, you can pick up some popular ML frameworks and learn the basics relatively quickly. The difficulty in this field comes from the amount of theoretical knowledge you need to interpret your results.

All these data science bootcamps/learn quick schemes are like teaching a blind person to drive a racecar. He can work the pedals and the steering wheel - but has no idea where he's going.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#67

Post by mikert5671 » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

cup-of-tea wrote: post #65

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

You're right, it's not that hard. A lot of the gatekeeping is because the departments are run by nontechnical people who just don't understand your skill set. They also need to guard the bullshit and not let anyone realise it's just really shoddy programming at the end of the day.

this is 100% wrong

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#68

Post by Puer » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #59

maxxxxx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many data scientists really do theoretical investigation? From what I see not too many. It feels a little like looking only for devs who can write complete operating systems and then having them write CRUD apps.

90% of data science time is spent sourcing and then cleaning the data. 10% is spent preparing and delivering reports to stakeholders. The ML time is a rounding error. The job in which you are magically given a pristine dataset and can just tweak ML models all day doesn’t exist.

The running assumption on HN seems to be that ML/data science jobs are easy because you can just "plug in" already implemented algorithms and just expect things to work. I think the barrier for most of these jobs is a proper statistics education--one that involves active exploration of real world data that's imperfect and has to be cleaned. Very rarely is there an obvious solution to big data problems and much of the work is tedious parameter tuning that absolutely does require knowledge of the math and domain and not just how to write k-Means.

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#69

Post by posix_compliant » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

peatmoss wrote: post #15

I have a love / hate relationship with bucketing a whole lot of formerly separate disciplines into the data science label. In my case, I'm a reasonably solid R / Python programmer (who occasionally dabbles in racket, clojure, and others). I've got the sort of applied statistical training of someone who took a quant-heavy course load in a PhD program. I've even (by title) been a data scientist a couple times now. Havi…

As a "junior" applying to data science positions, I have a 50/50 mix of "no way I'm qualified for that", and "that sounds like a really fun problem."

Re: Data Science Is America’s Hottest Job

#70

Post by tarunkotia » Fri, May 18, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

kitanata wrote: post #41

I recently quit a gig and spent a few months looking for a data science/machine learning gig. I was surprised just how gatekeeped these positions were. Everyone wanted a PhD or a masters degree. I have 15 years of experience in software. I’ve done everything to low level game programming and graphics programming to web development, to AI (but not as a specific position title). The gatekeeping in this field surprised…

There was a popular quote in 70's & 80's in corporate America "nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM machine" and that had more to do with branding than anything else. It's the same reason certain law firms hire only from Harvard, you are not second guessing the candidate, as far as the qualifications are concerned. It certainly does not guarantee that the candidate will be good but does fit the requirements.

I think this is a problem for candidates who don't meet the set requirements, but this can also be an opportunity to differentiate from rest of the pack.