Not that polemic indeed, but only if we're willing to stop gazing our own navels. Most of us here aren't hired with nice paycheks because we're smart and creative, but because we're smart, creative, and yet without the sense to find better work than Charlie Work.
Anyway, this is a shame. I thought "data science" still had nice R&D flavored jobs. Colour me disillusioned.
BTW, that may sound polemic, but it's not -- that's really how a lot of business types, academic researchers, and others think of nearly all programming-related work.