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Comment by learc83 | Hacker News Reader

>as an outsized interest in mid-level software engineers wanting to be data scientists, mostly because the career development prospects at that stage are grim

What are you basing this on? Senior software engineer jobs are a lot easier to come by than data scientist jobs and from what I've seen, pay better than the average data scientist job as well.

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I agree with you, but I think data science has the perception of more money and prestige. While senior software engineers often get I paid more, I do believe that data scientists have more opportunity to be involved in strategy and business decisions, which can help one get more exposure to high ranking employees. But this is not always the case.

Data scientists do have opportunities to work with management, but the realities of working with MBAs can be surprising. I found myself reading corporate finance textbooks to be able to fully participate when I started in data science.

This is truer outside of the Bay area- non-tech focused companies that see IT as a cost center, but have somehow decided they need to do 'Big Data Analytics'.

It’s the “it” thing right now. Everyone wants to “leverage” their data and projects in that space get readily funded. It’s also seen slightly better than the typical IT-is-cost-center mentality because of the immediate potential benefit or the risk of losing to a competitor.

I went into Data Science after grad school 5 years ago.

If it had been as difficult then as it is now I would probably have chosen software engineering.

Honestly, I feel software engineering might be better anyway as it's much easier to demonstrate value building features and shipping products rather than endless analysis and questionable models.

I am just going on my experience, but according to glassdoor data scientists of the same years of experience earn about 20k more than senior software engineers here in Boston.

Glassdoor is not accurate

source?

Could be really depending on location.

Current Software Engineer, for full disclosure, pondering how to move away from the prevalent web dev job market where I currently reside. Data science seems to pay on par.

Depends on the company. I fought the senior engineering leadership and HR to get data scientists on the same scale as engineers (they had previously been lower--much lower).

Even if that's true, the OP was talking about mid level software engineers, so they would be leaving a field where they had 5 or so years of experience and moving into one where they had 0.

OP had I right in the first sentence. Senior Analysts not Senior Software Engineers.

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