A lot of times it doesn't make life easier. It just looks easier to people signing the checks. And the people building/selling the products aren't data scient

A lot of times it doesn't make life easier. It just looks easier to people signing the checks. And the people building/selling the products aren't data scientists so they don't realize they are not making life easier. They just see data scientists as a bunch of hard-nosed elitists who want everything for free. I've worked as a data scientist on both sides of the table. As a customer facing data scientist for a product company selling to data scientists and for 2 companies that sell physical products and employ data scientists. I've been in sales situation where I'm telling the sales rep the product we are selling isn't going to work for the data scientists we are selling to. And their response is to go above their heads because the Data Scientists "Are too technical and don't want to pay for anything." I evaluate data science products on a semi-regular bases and many that "make my life easier" actually make one thing easier and 10 other things harder. Lots of these products are also new and they are trying to be competitive in a space that people are only starting to understand. So if something is broken I can't fix it. I'm stuck pointing fingers while my management gets frustrated with me because this solution was supposed to make life easier. There's also the reality that right now open-source is king and if I want to hire somebody it's much easier to find people with those skills. And yes, I have a selfish desire to use open-source tools because I want to be employed in the future. Don't get me wrong, there are product areas (e.g. Data Science DevOps) where it absolutely makes sense for a Data Scientist to buy something to make their lives easier. And a lot of them do.