R has a few advantages over Python for data science work, but Python has a big one: it's also widely used by software engineers who are not data scientists. I

R has a few advantages over Python for data science work, but Python has a big one: it's also widely used by software engineers who are not data scientists. I found it easy to jump from the software side of things to the data side of things because I already knew the quirks and tricks of Python. Having to learn a new language would have made this transition harder.