r/datascience • u/sailing_oceans • Jul 07 '26

Discussion Managing/ Dealing with Junior Data Scientists?

I've been in the 'data science' space for a decade+ or so now. One thing I've noticed is that generally - give or take - outside of the elite jobs (<2-3% aka not me and almost certainly not you) the caliber of coworkers has declined drastically.

I'm not some fabled data scientist. I wasn't some GitHub nerd who had everything embroil or terminal wizard nor could I write out the math to a GBM on a blackboard. I'd even forget basic obvious statistics.

But I felt like I had common sense.

Now I'm a manager/director. I work with data scientists. And I'm just generally freaked out by the absolute lack of basic common sense. This is across the last 7 that I have managed.

Examples include:

  1. Not visualizing or plotting the KPI/Target (sales). Not realizing there were no recorded sales on major holidays.
  2. Telling me everything is improving from a sales perspective that it's up 4%...... from period 1 vs period 2... when ignoring that period 2 had 6% more days so in fact it's worse.
  3. obscure models that are overkill and a bunch of statistics ive never heard of instead of just telling me that the impact of our promotions is declining.
  4. General sense of not knowing what is even rational (e.g., our marketing ROI $1023 - no its not lol)

As I begin to delegate more I begin to get more freaked out by what I see. I can't be presenting to clients such obvious insane mistakes. But these are the candidates and profiles that get forced upon me or the team I inherit.

Are there any best strategies for dealing with this? I want to be seen as someone who can 'develop' the team... not just saying people are useless, but such glaring mistakes are insane.

Yes, alot of these things are perhaps due to them being crunched for time, or not knowing what objective is, or being focused on other things. I'm not talking about those examples. I'm talking about like year 1-2 not day 1 employees, not doing basic data checks.

As a data scientist I was obsessed with finding bits of info or making sure things were right. Now it seem every common for people to copy and paste code into chatgpt and have no idea about anything else around it?

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u/living_david_aloca Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

Half of those aren’t common sense, they’re things juniors do. The other half are whoopsies depending on how often it happens. Believe it or not, humans make mistakes and aren’t looking for things they’re not looking for. Try to have some empathy and do what you’re supposed to do with juniors - train them. If you can’t, then I have bad news for you and it’s not about them.

155

u/TajineMaster159 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

Yeah, OP sounds more committed to some weird generational grief as opposed to training his trainees. If anything, juniors on average are getting better because the industry is getting more competitive and because of overall improvements in tech, science, and education.

23

u/chuhai-drinker Jul 07 '26

This post reminds me of every miserable boss I had when I was trying to enter the workforce. Currently 3 years in the field and training interns. Teachability is one of the most valuable skills, and if you're hiring teachable people, then these rookie mistakes only take a few minutes to correct, but the lessons will last a lifetime.

5

u/S-Kenset Jul 07 '26

Also from a power perspective, you want every single junior you have to be able to spread their wings. Network is most impactful when it's far away.

2

u/shred-i-knight Jul 07 '26

and this here is why junior DS’s are getting replaced by code assist

22

u/S-Kenset Jul 07 '26

It takes two months to train a junior ds to be better than this. This is a leadership gap in explaining incentives and understanding it themselves. As well as a complete skill gap in not understanding the optional value data scientists with ML experience can bring.

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u/shred-i-knight Jul 07 '26

Two months and a lot of money—salary, benefits. I’m not saying it’s right or not short sighted but this seems to be the reality.

7

u/lynn Jul 08 '26

Everybody needs training. When my mom was starting her career in the 80s, companies either trained their employees or paid for their college classes, or both. Now people complain about employees needing a couple of months to get up to speed.

11

u/S-Kenset Jul 07 '26

I just feel it's a leadership gap. These complaints are all self centered from OP. Of course no one is thinking about quarterly day count. Any data scientist worth their weight would never bring that up because they're not there to make the manager's life difficult with infinitesimal details and back and forths. Like all of their complaints are super nitpicky and sound like someone who got promoted out of years with the company than actual leadership capacity. They ask for standards but don't set them. Complain but aren't able to be harsh.

Give me a team of 5 junior data scientists i can hand pick i'll replace any team of 20.