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Unfortunately a lot of the "Data Scientist" I meet are nothing more than excel / sheets gurus. Most of them have never written a line of code or syntax that is

gaius 8y ago
Unfortunately a lot of the "Data Scientist" I meet are nothing more than excel / sheets gurus. Most of them have never written a line of code or syntax that is more complex than a nested vlookup. Those kinds of jobs are advertised as “data science” jobs. In fact any job that involves data manipulation at all is getting re-branded as “data science”. Partly this is employers doing a bait-and-switch to attract better candidates and partly its just jumping on the bandwagon. But candidates aren’t entirely innocent either. How many programmers - an honest title for honest work - call themselves Senior Certified Enterprise Solution Architect Team Thought Leaders or some such nonsense? We’ve all met a few. LinkedIn is crawling with them.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dx034 8y ago
I had a feeling that in Europe, a lot of those jobs run under Data Analyst. Data Scientist roles at small companies can go in that direction but most that I've interacted with strictly don't do Excel anymore where possible. Mostly because they found out that turnover is very high if you hire Data Scientists for VLOOKUPS, so you'd better give talented people other tasks to keep them.
- frockington 8y ago
  If I were European i'd scope up one of those boring jobs and then do another job while at work. Those job protection laws (at least in France) are free money if you work it right
  - dx034 8y ago
    If it makes you happy, sure. Most people I know prefer an interesting job they like, rather than 8 hours of boredom. Remember, the employer can very well deny you any personal internet access. Personal internet usage at work is grounds for dismissal even with strict labour laws.
    - frockington 8y ago
      Interesting take, I never thought of that
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's what I see too with the data scientists at my company. They run a few SQL queries and create spreadsheets. Nothing really groundbreaking.

gaius 8y ago

Unfortunately a lot of the "Data Scientist" I meet are nothing more than excel / sheets gurus. Most of them have never written a line of code or syntax that is more complex than a nested vlookup. Those kinds of jobs are advertised as “data science” jobs. In fact any job that involves data manipulation at all is getting re-branded as “data science”. Partly this is employers doing a bait-and-switch to attract better candidates and partly its just jumping on the bandwagon. But candidates aren’t entirely innocent either. How many programmers - an honest title for honest work - call themselves Senior Certified Enterprise Solution Architect Team Thought Leaders or some such nonsense? We’ve all met a few. LinkedIn is crawling with them.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dx034 8y ago

I had a feeling that in Europe, a lot of those jobs run under Data Analyst. Data Scientist roles at small companies can go in that direction but most that I've interacted with strictly don't do Excel anymore where possible. Mostly because they found out that turnover is very high if you hire Data Scientists for VLOOKUPS, so you'd better give talented people other tasks to keep them.

frockington 8y ago
If I were European i'd scope up one of those boring jobs and then do another job while at work. Those job protection laws (at least in France) are free money if you work it right
- dx034 8y ago
  If it makes you happy, sure. Most people I know prefer an interesting job they like, rather than 8 hours of boredom. Remember, the employer can very well deny you any personal internet access. Personal internet usage at work is grounds for dismissal even with strict labour laws.
  - frockington 8y ago
    Interesting take, I never thought of that

maxxxxx 8y ago

That's what I see too with the data scientists at my company. They run a few SQL queries and create spreadsheets. Nothing really groundbreaking.