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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Here's the tricky thing:

I love your post; I agree with your post; but it takes a 90 degree turn at the end:

"My number one advice to entry level data scientists is to not be this guy. "

Everything most people are saying here indicates it's GREAT to be that guy. You're paid, you're respected, you get the fun parts, you love your job and it's pretty safe. It just happens to suck for everybody else including team and business... but it feels that in a practical sense, gist of everybody's actual unwitting message is "BE that guy, if you can" :-<<<

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If you're that guy and you have a secure job it means you write models no one ever sees in a company which doesn't know or respect data, or you work in some data science factory as a small cog of a fairly well oiled team. The latter does happen from time to time, but it's often the former.

In every other place, your job is on the line to be erased because people will soon realize no one wants a wise-ass who doesn't actually contribute much to the bottom-line in the end.

It sucks being that guy because everyone else ends up hating you.

Depending on the work environment it's not a stretch to see software engineers complaining to management, sometimes going as far to create rumors to get the jr data scientist fired.

So, no the grass is not greener. It's best to not be that person. This is why I go out of my way to prevent that scenario when I lead a team.

Not really.

You just get seen as the product owner/project manager.

That's a really good point.

I tend to be seen as a product lead / owner / stakeholder, so I feel like I'm being called out. lol

I think one difference is the software engineers see me as someone who is helping them by making their life easier. I'm not just throwing work at them blindly. I'm working with them. Also, they like it when I include them in the data science brainstorming sessions to solve difficult problems. I guess it's seen as exotic or something, but whatever the reason, they really love to be apart of it.

I think it's probably seen more as just being a decent boss.

easy to ignore hate when youre pulling a 300k bonus at comp season and can jet to st. barts to go deep sea fishing and drink claws.

Data scientists do not pull that kind of bonus. Today many of them get paid less than the data engineers do.

news to me, and welcome news to hear at that since I'm more in the data plumbing and packaging business, not algo publications.

my personal data points are from folks on buyside. trading margins have been downward trending for years

Quant research work isn't data science work which is probably where the mix up is.

On the quant side bonuses are distributed to the team.

Specifically, this is my advice to ENTRY level data scientists who are trying to find a job and compete against a flood of candidates hot off the bootcamps. I guess once you get your foot in the door, you can be that guy if you want. It seems to be a successful strategy at companies without technical leadership.

The flipside is that there are 4x the job posts for data engineering as there are for "that guy".

Companies understand that you can't hire five of that guy and get things done. If you have 5-8 years of experience as a technical product manager/data science combo then you are very happy as the magician. But very few magicians are being hired out of college, and a lot of "software engineers in data"

Pretty soon companies are going to start realizing that the 4x DEs can largely replace that 1 DS, and they will be more than happy to do so.

I went into DE because I was kind of forced into the space, but I'd strongly prefer doing full-stack DE. Anymore, I still have the opportunity to build models, they just aren't client-facing stuff, but instead are kind of Data Plumber Bots that help me do my job better so I can waste more time building other fun bots that I can't otherwise be paid for.

Seems like a waste of resources, but my manager could have another DS tomorrow, but my role would take months to fill.

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