Chances of you being a data scientist are really low if you have not heard about the following; Data Science apparently is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century, lucky me, and lucky you! In all honesty though, I love my job, I however hate the state the data science field is in today.
Before we delve in, a little about me. I am currently working as a ds in a big tech company that you have probably heard about. I also hold a masters in statistics, and am overly interested in theory behind the models we use, and this is where the problem is raised. As said I like my job, and keeping quiet is key, which is why I have decided on staying anonymous.
The problem is that most data scientists that you will ever work do not have the right qualifications. Yes, they can query some tables and say that some number rises. Good on them, most of us learnt that in elementary (the numbers part, not the querying ofc). In all honesty, I think that everyone could go in, without any education and get a job as a data scientist. It is a monkey’s work apparently.
So ok, maybe I am just overqualified for my work, and maybe it is just easy, but in all honesty I do not think that is the case. Subpar data scientists bog the analysis down, as they do not have the proper understanding of theory and methods, the rest of us have to spend to explain.
Data science in general seems to have independently developed a part from statistics, which makes no sense to me, why would you ignore theory that has been in existence for hundreds of years. You might argue that the theory is unneeded, and that it just introduces overcomplexity when we can see that numbers increase, but that throws away robustness and stability which considering theory introduces. I have myself witnessed, and been on the cleanup crew after break downs due to bad work done in analysis.
But hey ya, the mse was low on the test set, and remember there is no way to open black box models right?
more ranting to come, wfh frees more time of day.
