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Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

forbes.com

1–10 of 14 posts

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#3
Open source packages such as Uber Ludwig (https://eng.uber.com/introducing-ludwig/) - let alone the commercial stuff - makes you wonder the same thing. Such tools should automate a large portion of the mundane parts of the data science workflow. While there's a lot more to the job than building/training a classifier, I wonder what the field will look like once that part is commoditized.

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#4
While some data science tools may be `excel-implementable` (or some equivalent) in five to ten years, there's significant risk of mis-implementation of results given how much of a mystery many methods are to the people who'd use them.

I'd compare data scientists more to CPAs. You can have software like TurboTax and Quickbooks, but CPAs don't seem to be going anywhere. Similarly, anything that's more complicated than cookie-cutter data analysis will require someone who knows how to develop, build, and debug the algorithms themselves.

Use cases of data science are often too specific for most data science to turn into button pushers. Look at the vast array of ways a neural network can be implemented. Which one of those implementations will be in the `excel package`?

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#5
Not just data science jobs: I think most ‘knowledge worker’ type jobs are going to go through large changes: AI assistants that will make people very much more productive in their jobs, and fewer jobs available because company’s will get more work per employee. I expect salaries to soften, with the exception of people who are at the very top of their fields.

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#6
Interesting discussion on this article over on the machine learning reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/awu86b/dis...

I particularly agree with the comment saying:

no software is capable of trawling through the bowels of the organisation to find out the correct interpretation of the `Extra2` field on the `Sales` table that takes three values: "TRUE", "Error" and null.

This, data cleaning, and understanding how best to store the data for better insight are the true bulk of data science work, very little is the shiny model building work. I guess this is close to the Industry specialist as outlined in the article though

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#7
That's funny, didn't expect to see that my old boss Nate Oostendorp wrote this.

Anyway, the sooner enterprise stops putting data science in an ivory tower the better off we'll be. The number of Fortune 500 clients I have who can't seem to grasp that an algorithm or model by itself is not a business solution is disheartening.

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#8

Interesting discussion on this article over on the machine learning reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/awu86b/dis... I particularly agree with the comment saying: no software is capable of trawling through the bowels of the organisation to find out the correct interpretation of the `Extra2` field on the `Sales` table that takes three values: "TRUE", "Error" and null. This, data cleaning, and und…

That more likely falls in Data Engineering part.

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#9
Man that's a nothingburger article.

>Over the coming years, I foresee data scientists dividing into at least five types of workers

Yeah, sorry my dude; that happened before "data science" was even considered a profession.

The other tools; trifecta is a helpful thing, but I doubt it's helpful enough people will actually pay for it. Auto-sklearn/DataRobot was the result of a DARPA request a few years ago, and doesn't even vaguely solve the right problem. It's also just R-caret which has existed for 10 years now.

My prediction: data science in 5-10 years will look pretty much the same as it does now. Just like aircraft in 5-10 years will look pretty much the same as they do now, or did 5-10 years ago.

Re: Radical Change Is Coming to Data Science Jobs

#10

That's funny, didn't expect to see that my old boss Nate Oostendorp wrote this. Anyway, the sooner enterprise stops putting data science in an ivory tower the better off we'll be. The number of Fortune 500 clients I have who can't seem to grasp that an algorithm or model by itself is not a business solution is disheartening.

The reason is that this shit is not about what gets done, it is about what can be internally marketed and to whom and for what political ends. I often see that my actual work output is less important than the "aura" of work output in terms of team size, techno-hype, that sort of thing. Whether or not a given project fails is nearly immaterial compared to the amount of hype it can generate.

You should see the suits drooling over "blockchain" and "machine learning" with ZERO actual examples of how it assisted the company bottom line or ever even can or will. I'm on a $6M project to improve how our clients get at their data and so far the whole thing is a giant toy with 20 users and they want to scale to "millions of users" and have zero clue how to correctly go about it.

It's frustrating, I feel I am living a lie.

Big healthcare is a money suck that takes in billions and returns pennies to the people most in need. Also am pissed this morning because we found out the one medication my wife takes tripled in price since last time she refilled it. How is that even possible? Something is badly broken here. BS has taken over the real mission.

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