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The market for serious data scientists is growing, but is not as dire as these articles make it seem. The private sector has wrapped 'senior data analyst','BI

The market for serious data scientists is growing, but is not as dire as these articles make it seem. The private sector has wrapped 'senior data analyst','BI developer','data base administrator', and 'data engineer' into 'data scientist', along with the ML/AI/stats roles you would expect. So sure, when you put all the roles that touch data into one basket, and we're in a world that demands increasing familiarity with data systems and data analysis techniques... a gap is going to appear. Color me shocked Typical data scientist role I see posted is looking for: - SQL - AWS/Azure - Tableau/Power BI/Other BI tools - Python/R - Increasingly Hadoop/Spark With Java/Scala/C#/C++ listed as 'nice to haves' along with 'machine learning' and 'big data'. These are not research roles, and while they often want a masters degree or more they really don't need them. If you fit that bill you can probably get a role paying $95-120k just about anywhere in the US. You'll wrangle data, make pipelines, build dashboards and occasionally deploy a model or two when the planets align. If you want to/are capable of doing more ground breaking/cutting edge work, these roles will crush your soul in 8-12 months.

nabla9 8y ago
> Typical data scientist role I see posted is looking for: - SQL - AWS/Azure - Tableau/Power BI/Other BI tools - Python/R - Increasingly Hadoop/Spark They are looking for programmers. Unless... C programming makes you a hardware engineer, Fortran programming makes you a physicist, Ada programming makes you a rocket scientist, and Lisp programming makes you a god.
antt 8y ago
>If you fit that bill you can probably get a role paying $95-120k just about anywhere in the US. You'll wrangle data, make pipelines, build dashboards and occasionally deploy a model or two when the planets align. If you expect to pay that little to anyone who knows the above to any degree you will have a bad time. A number of projects I have joined absolutely look like someone treated them as a way to learn the technology before moving onto better paying jobs, leaving the business with a terrible mess that's largely unfixable without a rewrite. You're better off hiring one developer that knows what they are doing at above market rates than three who don't for the same price.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >If you expect to pay that little to anyone who knows the above to any degree you will have a bad time. I believe you misunderstood his point. The $95-120K figure is for people who do not do ground breaking research. Anecdotally, I know people who get hired for data science who are doing very little data sciencey stuff (a bit of data manipulation/slicing and lots of plots - almost no actual ML). These people should not get paid more than a typical SW developer, and decent SW developers should get paid more.
  - antt 8y ago
    > - SQL - AWS/Azure - Tableau/Power BI/Other BI tools - Python/R - Increasingly Hadoop/Spark Is above and beyond a typical SW developer. That's three languages and two dsls. If you expect that on a 120k salary, you will be what you pay for, e.g. a code monkey living on peanuts.
    - BeetleB 8y ago
      First, I don't think he meant they expect you to know all of these - just a subset. Second, most people I know who know R or Pandas or other Python numerical stuff (NumPy/SciPy) are horrible programmers. They're good at numerical work - but that doesn't translate to good coding skills. The bar is not that high to know it. It's somewhat similar with AWS/Hadoop. Most people I know have taken learn these (online training, in person classes, etc) with very basic SW skills. I don't doubt expert programmers exist who know these technologies - I'm just pointing out that it's not that hard to learn some of these. Plenty of people learn these without knowing much SW. To be a good SW developer takes a lot more. >If you expect that on a 120k salary, you will be what you pay for, e.g. a code monkey living on peanuts. You must be in the Bay Area. A 120K salary is above the median for SW developers for most of the country, and grants them a great lifestyle: Big house, two cars, vacation travel, etc. Hardly "living on peanuts". The GP was clear he was not talking about the Bay area: >If you fit that bill you can probably get a role paying $95-120k just about anywhere in the US. Finally, the point is: If you studied actual Machine Learning, he is pointing out that these jobs are mostly not that, and you will just do a boring job.

nabla9 8y ago

> Typical data scientist role I see posted is looking for: - SQL - AWS/Azure - Tableau/Power BI/Other BI tools - Python/R - Increasingly Hadoop/Spark They are looking for programmers. Unless... C programming makes you a hardware engineer, Fortran programming makes you a physicist, Ada programming makes you a rocket scientist, and Lisp programming makes you a god.

antt 8y ago

>If you fit that bill you can probably get a role paying $95-120k just about anywhere in the US. You'll wrangle data, make pipelines, build dashboards and occasionally deploy a model or two when the planets align. If you expect to pay that little to anyone who knows the above to any degree you will have a bad time. A number of projects I have joined absolutely look like someone treated them as a way to learn the technology before moving onto better paying jobs, leaving the business with a terrible mess that's largely unfixable without a rewrite. You're better off hiring one developer that knows what they are doing at above market rates than three who don't for the same price.

BeetleB 8y ago
>If you expect to pay that little to anyone who knows the above to any degree you will have a bad time. I believe you misunderstood his point. The $95-120K figure is for people who do not do ground breaking research. Anecdotally, I know people who get hired for data science who are doing very little data sciencey stuff (a bit of data manipulation/slicing and lots of plots - almost no actual ML). These people should not get paid more than a typical SW developer, and decent SW developers should get paid more.
- antt 8y ago
  > - SQL - AWS/Azure - Tableau/Power BI/Other BI tools - Python/R - Increasingly Hadoop/Spark Is above and beyond a typical SW developer. That's three languages and two dsls. If you expect that on a 120k salary, you will be what you pay for, e.g. a code monkey living on peanuts.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    First, I don't think he meant they expect you to know all of these - just a subset. Second, most people I know who know R or Pandas or other Python numerical stuff (NumPy/SciPy) are horrible programmers. They're good at numerical work - but that doesn't translate to good coding skills. The bar is not that high to know it. It's somewhat similar with AWS/Hadoop. Most people I know have taken learn these (online training, in person classes, etc) with very basic SW skills. I don't doubt expert programmers exist who know these technologies - I'm just pointing out that it's not that hard to learn some of these. Plenty of people learn these without knowing much SW. To be a good SW developer takes a lot more. >If you expect that on a 120k salary, you will be what you pay for, e.g. a code monkey living on peanuts. You must be in the Bay Area. A 120K salary is above the median for SW developers for most of the country, and grants them a great lifestyle: Big house, two cars, vacation travel, etc. Hardly "living on peanuts". The GP was clear he was not talking about the Bay area: >If you fit that bill you can probably get a role paying $95-120k just about anywhere in the US. Finally, the point is: If you studied actual Machine Learning, he is pointing out that these jobs are mostly not that, and you will just do a boring job.