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The Struggles of a Data Scientist

Paul May
Towards Data Science
7 min readApr 24, 2019

I’ve been a data scientist for around 4 years now, though it really depends on your definition as I always did many parts of it, but it wasn’t really a defined job at the time. While I do find data science, along with reliability engineering, exciting and it is one of the most interesting jobs I’ve had, at times I can see the cracks in the veneer of its label as one of the most satisfying jobs. If you dig around the internet you will quickly find articles or posts that highlight there is a level of unhappiness or high churn rates.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Is data science a terrible job?

In my opinion that is not true. The newness and scarcity of the machine learning field is a big bonus in that good employers know your worth (average base pay in the UK is estimated at £42,000 per year) and give you freedoms (like remote working or flexible working hours) that can be a breath of fresh air to the more regimented office job. Additionally, the wealth of problems and uses of machine learning mean that your work can be immensely stimulating and rewarding.

So, what is wrong?

I think this newness and popularity is part of the cause of the problem. With the rush to get in on the “artificial intelligence boom” companies are trying to hire data scientists but they don’t know what skills they need and therefore…

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Towards Data Science
Towards Data Science

Published in Towards Data Science

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Paul May
Paul May

Written by Paul May

Data Scientist, Astrophysics PhD, reliability engineer and part time writer. I love exploring the world of science and how it shapes the world we live in.

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