Re:Ask HN: Am I too late for the “Data Science” wave?
by ethbr0 on Sunday November 15, 2020 @10:39AM
(#25101973)
> practical knowledge of data science
This is key. What do companies actually want when they hire a data scientist? Actionable products that make their business better.
What does it take to produce actionable products? A data strategy (collection, ingress, normalize, enrich, store, expose), a compute provisioning strategy, data engineering (pull from source system(s), land in target stores in a reliable, available, automated manner), data science, and data application (reporting, integration with target systems, app development).
Which of those components do they typically have? A data scientist. Because they just hired one.
Career-wise, the more unifaceted your skillset is, the more you're limited to employers that already have all the other pieces in place. Which effectively limits you to very large enterprise (~T100).
Start to be able to fill some of the other roles yourself, and you can compete for and succeed in smaller and more interesting opportunities.
This is key. What do companies actually want when they hire a data scientist? Actionable products that make their business better.
What does it take to produce actionable products? A data strategy (collection, ingress, normalize, enrich, store, expose), a compute provisioning strategy, data engineering (pull from source system(s), land in target stores in a reliable, available, automated manner), data science, and data application (reporting, integration with target systems, app development).
Which of those components do they typically have? A data scientist. Because they just hired one.
Career-wise, the more unifaceted your skillset is, the more you're limited to employers that already have all the other pieces in place. Which effectively limits you to very large enterprise (~T100).
Start to be able to fill some of the other roles yourself, and you can compete for and succeed in smaller and more interesting opportunities.