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Comment by iaw | Hacker News Reader

Any hard Engineering branch, Mathematics, and some of the more rigorous Biology stuff will do as well.

I honestly do not understand why there appears to be so much desire to get into Data Science when becoming a Programmer is equally lucrative and substantially easier to bootstrap into.

Edit: Seriously, programmers make as much if not more than Data Scientists for what ends up being substantially less stressful work (all things being equal). I suspect if the people pursuing DS actually ended up doing the work and living with the responsibilities they'll regret their time investments.

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there is no 'programmer' role in the c-suite, but there are chief data scientists. data scientists have the ear of top management, and have direct interaction where that is rarely true with programmers, which leads to...

there isn't a silicon ceiling on a ds pay like there is with programmers, and I disagree they are equally lucrative. I have never seen ds roles that were not substantially paid more than programmers; although with the explosion of the ds role, there are plenty of sub-par ds positions out there. (according to glass door, the average programmer makes 70k, the average ds makes 128 in san francisco). That disparity even holds for large tech like facebook.

as far as 'less stress', I believe that is subjective. some people would like to program, others more ds stuff, and often ds and programmers get to do a little of both.

>there is no 'programmer' role in the c-suite, but there are chief data scientists. data scientists have the ear of top management, and have direct interaction where that is rarely true with programmers, which leads to...

After working closely with dozens of tech companies, I have to say I've never seen a single "Chief Data Scientist." I also can't say I've even heard of a single company that has one (I'm sure some exist though). I have seen a Chief Technology Officer in virtually every tech company, which is essentially "programmer role in the c-suite" for the purposes of this discussion.

Furthermore, in the companies I've worked with that had in-house data scientists, they always treated them less well than the software engineers developing products.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that your statements don't match my experience, or the experience of anyone I personally know in this industry, and I'd be interested to see where your experience is coming from.

I've never seen a CTO write any code. That's not their job.

http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/09/john-carmack-on-developi...

John Carmack, CTO of Oculus and programmer extraordinaire, to bring our TV user interface to the Gear VR headset.

Well, honestly, John did most of the development himself(!), so I've asked him to be a guest blogger today and share his experience with implementing the new app.

I anticipated a comment like this one, which is why I explicitly said "for the purposes of this discussion."

You're right, a CTO doesn't usually write software, a CTO manages programmers who write software (or VPs managing teams of programmers, etc). But a CTO generally comes from a coding background, and how much data science do you think a "chief data scientist" is really doing, as opposed to managing other data scientists? People in the C-Suite typically don't really do anything other than manage people managing others in the same background they came from.

I think the spirit of my point still stands, pedantry aside. There clearly exists a commonly used and recognized c-suite role for programmers, whether they use their programming ability hands on or in managing others. It's not at all clear to me that there is a commonly used nor well recognized c-suite role for data scientists that would be distinct from CTO.

As a category of employee and work division, data scientists have not yet become distinct enough from cross-polinated disciplines to have that sort of representation.

I know that at least one former Amazon CTO was an excellent coder, although he didn't really do much (if any) while as CTO.

I don't know of many companies that have a "Chief Data Scientist" that reports directly to the CEO. In all honesty, they're more likely to report to a CTO.

Also, there's a reason why the C-suite people have the word "Officer" in their title as they're officers of the corporation and that implies additional legal responsibilities. It's not necessary that it be in their official title, but it typically is.

When did you last look at Glassdoor?

The avg entry level software engineer makes 110k in San fran, and 95k in the US as a whole.

It's 128k in San fran for a data scientist and 113k in the US as a whole.

I'd suspect the Data Science entries are skewed upwards, as most of them are employed by big companies, while software engineering has a larger small to medium sized employment prospect which probably bring down the average in comparison, but brings more job opportunity.

I think you searched for programmer on glass door. Programmers don't even need a degree, just a boot camp and you're good to go. I'm not sure data science has an equivalent, maybe business analyst? That averages 69k in San Fran.

Also, if you look for Machine Learning Engineers, a specialty of Software Engineering, they make more then Data Scientist, with a 140k avg in San Fran and 122k national.

> but there are chief data scientists. data scientists have the ear of top management

Have you worked in or near a c-suite before? Because both of those statements don't align with the reality that I've observed.

> there is no 'programmer' role in the c-suite

CTO?

Okay, so I'm equipped, but how do I find those jobs? By thew way, I'm making more than the 128 as a developer already, and not in expensive Cali, so is it even worth it?

I think any time you're talking with c-suite type people, the stress level is pretty high. That's been my experience anyways.

For me anyways, data science seemed like more interesting work (building predictive models, investigating trends and telling stories through analytics, working on deep learning) than pure programming.

I dunno which is easier to get into with a hard science background, but it took me about 1 yr of being an analyst to get a good ds job.

> data science seemed like more interesting work

That is the only good answer to why one would want to be a DS, if you don't find the work interesting you'll never succeed.

so do you have a "masters in CS or Statistics"?

No, phd in physics

ok, but still some science phd. thanks!

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