Tune in to Episode #18 of Data Science & AI Weekly to find out whether Data Scientist really is the sexiest job of the 21st century? The podcast is hosted by the Chief Data Science Mentor and one of India’s Top Data Science Academician in India, Manvender Singh.
TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:
[00:06] Series Overview
[00:34] Topic of Discussion: Is Data Scientist really the sexiest job of the 21st century?
[00:55] Who called it that?
[01:44] Why Data Scientist is not the sexiest job of the 21st century?
[03:33] Why Data Scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century?
[06:03] Wrap up!
[06:40] Learn more about Data Science at www.insaid.co
You can follow the podcast here.
Is Data Scientist really the sexiest job on the 21st century? Hi, everyone. My name is Manav. Welcome to Episode 18 of Data Science and AI Weekly. Data Science and AI weekly is our podcast series in which I cover everything that you need to know about becoming a top-notch Data Scientists, I covered all the topics that you would want to know about.
If you have not subscribed to our channel so far, just subscribe to our channel so that you get notifications and you never miss on the next podcast that when that is getting released. So let’s start with Episode 18. Is Data Scientists actually the sexiest job of the 21st century?
So first of all, let’s look at how did this entire term come into picture? Right? So where did this term come from that Data Scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century. So this actually appeared first in Harvard Business Review in the year 2012; a long-time back almost 7-8 years back, and this article was titled Data Scientists: The sexiest job of the 21st century and it was authored by two very famous people in the space: Thomas Devonport and DJ Patil.
DJ Patil, as some of you will know, formerly he was the Chief Data Scientist of the United States. So they released this article and since then that term caught on and this tagline became famous and like with every field, once something becomes famous, then it just carries on with that particular field. And similarly, it has happened with Data Science as well.
So the simple answer to the question is, is Data Scientists the sexiest job of the 21st century? Yes and no. Right? So the answer is yes and no. Now first of all, why no. Right. So first of all, it is Data Scientists don’t look sexy, right? So that’s, of course, goes without saying and the sexiest job why it is not such a sexy job. Why as the media would tell you, is because, yes, from the outside Data Scientists do a lot of, lot of impactful work, right? For example, when you look at one of the biggest technology platform products that we use in our daily life, let’s say Facebook, let’s say Pinterest, let’s say Netflix, all of these use Data Science in a big way. Right? So the work that you’re doing is impactful. But the problem at the end is that a lot of the time as a Data Scientist, you do not necessarily know which part of Data Science are you actually working upon, right? So it’s not that you’re building Machine Learning all the time, right? So possibly you might spend as a Data Scientist, a lot of your time in data cleaning as well, right. So since this job itself, the definition of the job itself and what you’d be doing differ so much from companies to companies for example, I have seen Data Scientists Working in top product companies who don’t write a lot of code, right? So they are primarily focusing on problem formulations, right. So, essentially, the role in itself differs so much that it might or might not be sexy when you actually get down to that particular role. So a lot of the sexiness is role dependent. Dependent on the kind of company that you join, depending on the kind of problem statements that you’re working on. So this is why it is not sexy. Now, the other side of the coin is the reason it is sexy is because of three reasons and why it has been called the success of the 21st century is the most important thing as I said about this field is that it lets you work on some amazing problems. No other field will give you problems statements that like the way you get into design so you get to work on very exciting problem statements. A beat Is this is a field that unlike a lot of other fields, when you’re doing the same kind of work every day, this is a field wherein the morning you will be doing something else in the afternoon you will be doing something else. And in the evening you’ll be doing something else. And on a weekly basis also you might be, for example, say interacting with the stakeholders, you might be working on Machine Learning, you might be coordinating with a product team, and you might be putting your Machine Learning model in production.
So you are working on a gamut of things which keeps you going which keeps your interest alive in this field. And that’s why this is sexy. So the first reason for sexiness is the impactful work and exciting work that you do. Second is the number of things that you do which keeps your spark alive. And the third reason is obviously the paycheck right? So this is one of the best-paid jobs right now in the world. And that’s why a lot of people are attracted to Data Sciences or old a lot of them are attracted in fact From what I’ve seen is not because of the kind of work but because of the salaries available in this space. So salaries are obviously very high. And in fact, the growth options are also tremendous.
So if you’re a freshly minted Data Scientist in Silicon Valley right now, you might start like at the salary of a software engineer, regular software engineer, and you might get paid well enough, but within one or two years or three years, if you become really good because the competition is very less as compared to software engineering jobs. And because companies are looking across industry to hire for Data Scientists, within one year, you might become a senior Data Scientist. And for all, you know, within two, three years, you might become a head of Data Science for a company as well. So a lot of this is totally dependent on you. So if you are really good, you can actually climb the corporate ladder very, very fast through Data Science. So all of these are the Sexy part of Data Science.
So my goal through this episode was to tell you both sides of the coin why it is not so sexy and why it is sexy. This was Episode 18 of Data Science and AI weekly, I hope you would have gotten a much better perspective about is Data Science clearly the sexiest job of the 21st century? I certainly think so. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section. And if you’ve been learning Data Science so far, let me know how your journey has been so far as well. This is Manav, I’m signing off from this episode, tune in to another episode of Data Science and AI weekly, which is going to be episode number 19. And I look forward to seeing your comments about this video in the comment section. Thank you very much and tune in to another episode.
