Hi all, please understand that it’s my first post, I wanted to ask any advices about landing on TRUE data scientist role. I’m currently working as a data analyst, executing data QA, visualization and some automation work. Like most of others, this role is heavy on SQL, Tableau, and Python. With the background of math and stats, I’ve always wanted to work on predictive/forecasting analytics but my daily task is more on simple descriptive stats side. I’ve been self studying with mooc courses and playing in the kaggle for about a year, but I met the barriers and found out there’s a definite limitation of resources in that most of the classes give a few lines of code, brought from handy library, without explaining math/statistical theology behind that. That’s how I landed on online master program in Georgia Tech but I don’t expect that much from this, to be honest. What I want to ask is.. 1. If you want to grow up as a predictive modeler but has limited resources (no real data scientists among you), what are the best way to overcome and use current resources? For example, I’ve been doing side projects in my work, trying to implement statistical learning to current business model, etc, but there’s not really to help me with this among my peers. 2. For those of you working as a data scientist, how did you land your current role? I have hard time to even get selected on the first round. Maybe lacking year of experience but I think, at least in data analyst field, there’s not much gap between someone has a 1 yr exp vs. 5 yoe. So there’s not much room to grow. Apologize for the long words, but I don’t really have anyone in this field to ask this kind of stuff. Thank you in advance!
Sorry for all the messages. On the info you gave me it seems like you could jump into the type of data science role u want to be in. Do you have a GitHub account where you can showcase all your projects? If not I highly encourage you to do that. It helps when people that are unsure of you from resume or interview can see your work and get some assurance about your skillset. NYC area has a great amount of DS roles. What is your current TC and YOE
No it’s all good. It helps a lot. I think MLE role is more the people who implement the mathematical model into code to the business model or project, so it could be one of good options but it seems little off to what I wanted. But, really, it’s great to hear from someone in the industry to tell the realistic view about this role. I’m freshly out of college..? Have almost a 1 yoe and my current TC is 84k.
Hmm maybe DS at a top tech company would be more of your wheelhouse. You should start looking for DS position in other company in NYC/SF Bay Area if u don’t get a TC increase after you’ve been with your company for a little over year. Feel like TC is low even for new grads in NYC, but I could be wrong. However, best thing to think about is u are getting vital skills. I forgot to mention that a lot of DS positions at respectable tech companies have interviews that rely heavily on SQL and product analytics, and some form of statistical testing.
You must not be in SF Bay Area.......a Data Scientist is just a data analyst in the Bay Area. Research Scientists are the ones doing the true machine learning. And MLEs are the ones helping them put into scalable production systems
AH. No I’m not, I’m at NYC. Thanks for the info :)
I’m joking but am half serious. A lot of data scientists here are just glorified data analysts. We have senior data scientists at atlassian that don’t even do modeling (yet). Just similar work to what you mentioned but probably a bit more advanced python and spark and sql. Analytics focused data scientists are still very useful. You don’t have to do machine learning to be a data scientist. If you want to only doing machine learning then maybe MLE roles would be a good choice, although a lot of them require SWE experience/skills