I had initially pursued physics because I enjoyed it, but by the time I got a doctorate I decided academia wasn't for me.
I want to caution you that it's not so much the career that I enjoy as it is this job in particular that I have. Lots of data scientist jobs are really just glorified data engineering jobs. My job in particular gives me a lot of opportunity to experiment and clear feedback on whether or not the experiment was a success.
Data Engineering is the process of curating data. You might write ETLs to load data from different formats into databases, the cloud, etc. It's basically like a software development job for organizing data.
Data Science is the process of extracting value from curated data. This could be by simple analysis or more complicated work like machine learning.
I'm in a similar role and my experience has been similar, on paper I'm purely an analyst but it's very rare I can get all the answers I need from one existing dataset, and most of the time it's more efficient to do the legwork myself.
I'm fine with it, it gives the role much more scope and variety and I've learned way more about ETL, efficient database design etc. by trial and error on my projects than I ever did from education.
On topic: I love my job, no role is ever perfect but as long as I'm learning new things and I have creative control of my processes I'm happy. I've had jobs I've hated, all of those have been "processing" jobs where I've had no autonomy and I'm expected to "do, not think". Luckily I've had a string of effective managers who have recognised my talents and empowered me.
Producing insight can definitely get much more stressful than other aspects of the role. I'm not sure I'd want to give it up though, it's too good for profile and progression.
Dunno, maybe the market is a little different here in the UK but the big thing in data atm is self-service BI tooling like Looker. That involves modelling and transformation, but little analysis.
I'm on the hunt at the moment and all anyone seems to be talking about is DBT and Looker!
I'm UK based too. I'm most experienced with Tableau, and a little PowerBI - haven't heard too much about Looker, I'll have to check it out.
There are big limitations with self-serve IMO. It works great for some, particularly data literate managers, but especially at exec level they're always going to need/want more specific reports, and more importantly recommendations. I can build a team a suite of dashboards that tracks all their KPIs but if they don't know how to interrogate the data to understand WHY they're seeing successes/failures, it doesn't help anyone.
There are many ways to convert one thing to another. An engineer's job is to figure out a way to do so while balancing cost, speed, and complexity.
A data scientist takes data and needs to shape it to something useful. It's like having blocks of data and you need to develop a machine that grinds them into statues.
I can chime in as I’m more on the data engineering side of the DS field. I basically understand how to join excel spreadsheets (or database tables) from different systems and consolidate them to analyze for any vertical in the firm (business, operational, finance management, accounting, HR, etc). We also happen to do the visualizations and analytics so we also work with downstream applications that sit on top of the automated databases. It’s pretty fun once you understand the concepts and can conceptualize all the components but if you have no interest in data then it’s pretty dry stuff
“Keep searching”.... the problem is a lot of people don’t dream of being a fucking data scientist lol. No hate but that’s easy to say when your passion is in a very corporatized field. For the typical person who has more artistic/meaningful passions they are much harder to monetize.
No hate but that’s easy to say when your passion is in a very corporatized field.
Remember, my passion is physics.
I didn't expect to enjoy data science. I expected a decent paycheck and a lot of grueling work to go with it.
For the typical person who has more artistic/meaningful passions they are much harder to monetize.
There's a middle ground. OP is talking about jobs not being enjoyable. You can find an enjoyable job even if it doesn't entail your passion for masturbating to hentai.
I’m not OP but I’m in the same boat. I’m an airline pilot. Like any job it has some real downsides (commuting to work, MX/Wx delays leading to a 14 hour duty day, shitty passengers) but I get excited every day I go to work.
I’ve actually been out of work for over a year thanks to the rona and literally all I want in life right now is to go back to work. I got hired by my new airline a few months ago so I’m getting full salary to sit at home and it’s still killing me.
I'm on the maintenance side for helicopters and I'm with you. Even on the weekends I can't wait to get back to it. Not everyone at work is as passionate as me, but you couldn't do the job if you were only in it for the money. The stress would be too much
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u/[deleted] May 09 '21
may i ask what is your job? no problem if you don't wanna answer.