So here's my postmortem after hunting for a data science job.
I’m tired of all the Medium thought pieces on how to become a data scientist because they don’t reflect the reality of getting a relevant job from the applicant’s side. And it’s hard, especially without a Masters/PhD.
The new 2017 trend for tech hiring is companies giving *both* a take-home assignment *and* an algorithm test before the on-site. And it's *never* a weighted average where doing well on the take-home can account for a weaker algorithm performance; it's always pass/fail.
What's worse is that even for the data science positions, I rarely received questions related to data/statistics/linear algebra, just how to implement these low-level algorithms like binary search and Markov chains. And having *any* bugs in the whiteboard code is a fail.
It’s especially disappointing because the take-home assignments are often better/accurate assessments of data science work on-the-job. (assuming the assignment is a reasonable length/scope: one of my homework assignments took *16 hours*)
If I had taken 2 years to get a Master's degree, then *maybe* things would have been easier. But at the current rate of change in data science hiring trends, companies which want Master's/PhDs now would require only PhDs by the time I would graduate.
And having a PhD in Statistics wouldn’t help at all for the silly algorithmic questions anyways.
Data science/machine learning has had a massive amount of hype lately, and in my personal opinion the hype is justified. And with all the free software and education readily available, there has never been a better time to learn.
Unlike software engineering, there are proportionally much fewer data positions available. The flip side to greater accessibility of data science is greater *gatekeeping*, and it's entirely possible that data science job hunting will become even *more* difficult in the future.
In fact, a few fellow Carnegie Mellon grads recently contacted me asking how to break into data science. I was sorry to admit that I didn't have any data science job hunting advice other than to *manage expectations accordingly*.
And have a little luck too. And it’s not the kind of luck you can manipulate with machine learning.
