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Comment by mapt | Hacker News Reader

Are businesses paying handsomely for data scientists?

If not, then they don't need data scientists.

Will they? Maybe, maybe not.

These ten-year industry forecast things are categorically ridiculous, whether they come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or some private forecaster.

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In my experience, people will throw money at "data scientists", if they can find them. It really is hard to find someone who is experienced in Physics (or Math, but they always seem to be physicists), has computational experience, but mostly who has the right frame of mind. A lot of people I've met who would be qualified for the role think it's beneath them: they don't want to use existing libraries, they want to progress the state of the art. And once you've done a PhD, I think it's hard for us to offer them a consistent level of challenging work.

Despite the 'science' part, I think there's a significant engineering component to the job: working within resource constraints and reusing existing tools. I've heard a lot of good explanations of how to approximate an integral, but the same people aren't really keen on working on a production recommendation system.

> And once you've done a PhD, I think it's hard for us to offer them a consistent level of challenging work.

As someone who's almost gotten their PhD in (mathematical models of) medical imaging, I think you'd be surprised at what kind of work would be consistently challenging enough to interest me.

I was at a job forum a couple weeks ago, and whenever I would bring up my incoming doctorate, company reps would be like "Oh, well our stuff must be pretty boring to you, then." I really wanted to say, "If I'm talking to you, it means what you're doing is interesting to me!"

I'm sure some PhDs are driven to improve the state of the art, but there's also a perception that a PhD won't want to go back to working on problems that are already solved in principle -- and that perception scares me, because I'm going to need a job soon....

You should have actually said that to them. It would have most likely helped you get the job.

> I was at a job forum a couple weeks ago, and whenever I would bring up my incoming doctorate, company reps would be like "Oh, well our stuff must be pretty boring to you, then." I really wanted to say, "If I'm talking to you, it means what you're doing is interesting to me!"

Yes! There is an absolute myth in industry that if someone who has a PhD shows interest, then you're best looking elsewhere, because they're likely to not find the work challenging enough and jump ship easily as a result.

I'm on the verge of completing my PhD thesis, so I can easily relate to what you're saying. I've pretty much perfected the art of starting with "I'm getting my PhD, but don't assume that I'm not interested in more "mundane" things". Pretty much, I think there's a challenge to be had in any tech job, and I think the main characteristics to convey to a possible future employer is that beyond having a great tech skill set, you know how to manage a project (HUGE skill I've gained from managing my PhD), you know how to perservere in the face of adversity (any PhD candidate that hasn't faced this hasn't done their PhD the "right" way in my opinion), and you're creative right down to your core.

As a recruiter, I’d say that you really need to tell what you’re thinking to people who might interview you. PhD shows that you’ve spent some years to get your skills Certified and thus master some of them. Bur it doesn’t mean that a person with a PhD is better than the one without but with 5-10 years experience of working in some specific area. Some good programmers and scientists(like data scientist) never get a PhD and their skills are not lower compared to their certified peers. So my advice would be: lay it on the line regarding what you’re looking for in terms of challenges and reward for them and show what you can. Papers don’t matter much nowadays but personalities do.

A PhD might not demonstrate that you're anymore capable of a specific job, but by the same reckoning plenty of employers pigeon-hole PhDs as "academic-types" with no sense of how things work in the real world. With respect to that, it is really is about breaking unfounded stereotypes and debunking myths that if you've gone through formal training and you have the "Dr." title attached to your name, that you're not really able to be a team player and achieve what's necessary in the business world. Bottomline is that whether you have a PhD or not, as you say, you have to show what you're capable of. The fact of the matter is that having completed a PhD brings with it a lot of "real world" skills than simply becoming a domain expert: project management, creativity, passion, perserverance, to name just a few. My experience, shared by others with a research background is that the the tech industry often needs "educating" that PhDs can bring meaningful value to the table, even for problems that at first might seem to not be of interest.

why would you be looking primarily at physicists if you are trying to find data scientists??

It isn't necessary, but many physicists have to analyze huge amounts of data out of necessity. Telescopes and particle accelerators generate petabytes of data. So they have a lot of practice with this sort of thing. Physicists also have to be ridiculously good at math and particularly statistics, again out of necessity.

Again, physics isn't really a prerequisite. It is just that many physicists have the relevant experience already to be a good data scientist.

Physics is pretty close to data science. In the end, physics often is about applying the scientific method to sth. Traditionally, sth is "the world", but it's not too different if it's just another set of data.

Actually yes, and they have been for a decade or more. They're called "quants" tho'. Someone who calls him or herself a "data scientist" is demonstrating a stunning lack of industry awareness - enough to rule them out for any job.

http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?page_id=248

it looks pretty good. i wonder how hard it is to get into these programs.

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