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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2696 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Data Science is a weird profession. You have people doing everything from adding 2+2 in excel sheets all the way upto creating SOTA models being labelled as data scientists. I'm sure there are other fields too where the variation in the difficulty and objects level of what is done is the same if not more.

As to why there are so many women? I think the reasons are;

  • Not all Data Scientists took the CS (with ML) route. Some just got there because they had quantitative undergraduate degrees or masters and failed upwards into the job because "thet know math". A lot of women would have been stupid to cash in on the trend, especially given most employers don't even know what the fuck they want when they want a data scientist, other than the fact that they want one.
  • The fact you would need to code isn't in your face as much. This is partly true if you find yourself in the "right" kind of data science job. I mean I'll admit, we have good PR.
  • Tends to be more credentialist and academic heavy than traditionally male dominated fields. Most DS openings ask for you have a masters. Base rate of female college grads is higher.

I think a lot of this just boils down to the title being ill defined and the field having really good PR.

I'm a DS for a startup sized company and I have to write a lot of backend/server side code (not Python unfortunately for me). I think a lot of the data science PR leaves out the fact that unless you are in a mega corp, no one is really going to take time out of their day to deploy the models you make. I am the default numbers and SQL guy for the company (the backend engineers only use ORMs and don't feel the need to help the hordes of analysts with their menial tasks).

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