Web based companies already hire these people. Google, Paypal, Amazon, even "small" startups. I interviewed for a number of these positions in Silicon Valley la

Web based companies already hire these people. Google, Paypal, Amazon, even "small" startups. I interviewed for a number of these positions in Silicon Valley last year but decided to do something else. Also, I don't really have the right stats background. Most smart businesses already know they have a data problem. FWIW, the first two: stats and data munging are the most important. There are very few people who really know stats and can also set up a pipeline for ripping data out of log files and databases and get it into an analyzable format. The cool viz stuff, like what Ben Fry does is not so important. You just need to be able to make a couple kinds of graphs and charts.