Disclaimer: I use the term Data Scientist throughout this post; however, popular titles such as Data Analyst, Data Engineers and BI analyst are randomly applied by people who know nothing, and these people share none of the responsibilities of a Data Scientist.
I have never had hopes about the potential impact of being a Data Scientist. I felt every company should be a “data company”, but everything I knew told me that companies are political institutions bounded by the pressures of late stage capitalism. Anyone who things different is dim, anyone who blogs about it is a moron.
My expectations did meet reality.
Where did my expectations come from?
I attended a four year Computer Science degree, followed by four and a half years of earning a Ph.D. I then spent 20 years in industry. 19 of the 20 weeks’ focus were not on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
I figured I’d spend most of my time buried in code and data, I was right, I had to find shit buried in it, and dig it out with my teeth. Executives hated me because I was a threat, but they needed me so I continued to get paid. I continue to be able to create insight and predictions that almost no one else can, and until this stops I will get a 200k a year salary, benefits and a Tesla.
All of this happened, I can't be bothered to waste my time commenting on this moronic blog post.
From about 2012 to 2018 I went round a lot of universities, conferences and companies doing presentations and I used to often ask the audience for a definition of data science (in the hope of getting a good one). The best one I heard came at the University of Bath where someone (I know who, but he didn't say it to back it with his reputation so it's not fair to name him - it wasn't me though) said "Just drop the data, it's science".
I totally think that - Data Science is about doing Science with found and evolving data sources, we aren't often able to construct our experiments from scratch, but we often get to augment them, but we always start from the data we are given - which is why it's a sub-field.
In any case - the Ph.D's I have employed have almost all known how to do Science, and it has really helped. Some people without a Ph.D. learn to do it. Experimental Ph.D's are best.
Maths and theoretical Physics Ph.D's are generally not able to do this!
Will you employ data scientist that have articles and years of expirience as data analyst in University but not Ph.D? How much role will be lack of Ph.D in this case?
As I said - if the person is capable of independent scientific investigation then I think they'd be good. I think that a Ph.D is formal training for that - but not the only way to learn.
I have never had hopes about the potential impact of being a Data Scientist. I felt every company should be a “data company”, but everything I knew told me that companies are political institutions bounded by the pressures of late stage capitalism. Anyone who things different is dim, anyone who blogs about it is a moron.
My expectations did meet reality.
Where did my expectations come from?
I attended a four year Computer Science degree, followed by four and a half years of earning a Ph.D. I then spent 20 years in industry. 19 of the 20 weeks’ focus were not on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
I figured I’d spend most of my time buried in code and data, I was right, I had to find shit buried in it, and dig it out with my teeth. Executives hated me because I was a threat, but they needed me so I continued to get paid. I continue to be able to create insight and predictions that almost no one else can, and until this stops I will get a 200k a year salary, benefits and a Tesla.
All of this happened, I can't be bothered to waste my time commenting on this moronic blog post.