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Comment by martingoodson | Hacker News Reader

The parent comment says ‘while being paid the exact same as someone on the SWE or PM track.’ Not ‘less than a SWE’, as you imply.

Why should a data scientist be paid more than a SWE? Because they have to learn several different topics? That is not such a big deal in my opinion (I work as a DS).

This language of ‘unicorns’ has been highly damaging to the field. There is nothing magical about a job which requires a lot of varied technical knowledge. Try looking at a syllabus for some other scientific subject. It’s fairly normal.

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I work as a DS as well. I don't think there's such a thing as "should be paid more" - the market shows us that SWE's are more highly valued presumably because there is more demand for those skills.

However, this will lead to people migrating from DS to DE and SWE roles if the compensation is relatively better. Yet we see articles about a 'shortage' in DS when they just aren't paying as much as a similar skill-set can get in a different role.

> the market shows us that SWE's are more highly valued presumably because there is more demand for those skills.

I think it's that it's that a tech company can more consistently make money from a SWE than any other role. You can always roll together an app and sell it. For every other role[0], you provide value to the organization, which eventually makes its way to the customers.

This is why the software bootcamp grads have fared better than the DS bootcamps (and ML bootcamps). A company can get a lot of value from a pretty crummy SWE and is willing to pay for it. A crummy Data Scientist, not so much.

[0] Sales is also similarly direct, depending on the industry. They enjoy a similar status.

> There is nothing magical about a job which requires a lot of varied technical knowledge

It's magical when the varied knowledge is orthogonal.

Having strong business sense AND being good at coding AND having stats/math skills is most definitely unicorn level.

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