I fell for the data science meme. Hard

I fell for the data science meme. Hard.

Some time ago I signed on with a data science company and tl;dr; got stressed, had a shitty micro-manager, quit within a year.

I'm now trying to remember how I ever fell for the meme. I can't.

Ads. Ads everywhere. Almost $600 billion spent on advertising in 2015 and the whole of data science is working towards selling people shit they don't need and don't want, until an ad gets to them.

What do you do Sup Forums? Is it stressful? Is it something you're proud of spending your finite life on?

It sounds like you suffered more from a shitty workplace, than an actual dislike for your work.

A shitty manager can make or break a job, no matter the work. One of the best jobs I ever had was pulling cable, and I attribute that to working with a great team and good supervision.

>micro-manager
That right there was your problem. You could have been getting your dick sucked for a living, but if you've got some twat constantly leaning over your shoulder, managing every minute of your day, you're going to want to die.

>What do you do Sup Forums? Is it stressful? Is it something you're proud of spending your finite life on?
I'm on a team that manages core routers and switches for a massive government network. It's surprisingly non-stressful. It's just a job, and I work to live, not live to work.

what do you mean by pulling cable? Is that another way of saying the 'core routers and switches' job?

Yeah my manager was a twat. But literally everything else was okay at the company, even great.

There are lots of different fields you can go to in data science, not just ads... Like health care, for example.

Why the fuck do you care what you are doing as long as you get paid?

I write software to monitor mass media on the Internet for Russian government.

Puts the food on the table, I guess.

>why the fuck do you care how you spend half of your life

are you really asking that question

I'm telling you, supervision can make or break a job.

Pulling cable was... just that. Pulling CAT5 through walls and conduit. Right out of high school I got a job running CAT5 through a building.
I used it as an example because it's a menial, low skill job, but the team made it rewarding.

Life sucks if you hate what you do for a living.

I don't hate it.

I'm an admin, it's okay, I gotta work on some sundays, but pay is good and I get to fuck around with shell scripts.

Sorry, meant to reply to

Data collection studies aren't actually science. They are just political tools. They are an extremely easy "science" to manipulate and only use circumstantial non-facts to create faux evidence.

I'm just thankful to have a job that pays half decent, and allows me to sit and work at my own pace.

Something like 25% of all workers are in the retail/foodservice industry.

I have an interview on Friday. How can I tell if the potential new manager is a twat? His wife works on the (small startup) analytics team so that's already a red flag since I'll have to worry about talking shit in front of two people instead of one.

How do I spot red flags for shitty managers? Tell me Sup Forums

I'll pay you $5 a day to continually eat your own shit. As long as you're getting paid, right?

Ask questions about the workflow, about the culture, management philosophy, about basically everything that you think would be important to you at work.

Also look at employee turnover rates, and research the company a bit to see if anyone has posted anything on sites like glassdoor.

Try to find out why your predecessor left.

Small startups can be great or nightmares. They offer great opportunities, but if you're looking for the traditional 9-5 lifestyle, that's probably not where you'll find it. I've heard some stories about startups demanding everything from their team, and not really compensating them fairly.

Your gut is your best indicator, and remember, it's better to be employed and looking for a job than to be living on ramen holding out for the perfect position.

Anyways, best of luck user!

I think I have something to say about this. It might be long, but I think it's interesting.

I'm a college dropout, I studied physics for 2 years and them math for other 2.

I got into the industry working as a webdev/data scientist, because, you know, data scientist is basically a fancy way of saying "statistician that expends way to much money on compute servers".

Eventually I landed my first job working on a set of algorithms to determined how much you have to charge cancer patients for insurance.

To be more specific they made me develop a system to "maximize the profits from cancer patients insurance".

I had to take into account things like willingness to seek for credits, willingness to sell the "assets" (house, car, you name it). Also I had to train the system in terms of treatments, efficiency and cost.

eg. If the insurance is too low it's easier to sell but the patient will not receive a proper treatment an die "too soon", if the insurance is too high you get less patients.

I had to find the "sweet spot" to maximize the most clients and kept them alive and sick for the longest.

I was quantifying the despair of people in mystery and how long I could milk their tears until they died.

And I did, I proved the system works and make EXTREMELY (we are talking on average 10x) more profit from cancer patients. As soon as my contract expired I left, couldn't deal with what I did.

People that shouldn't die will die because of numbers I put on a machine,

I could have gimped the system to perform worst, but no. I decided to show what the machine show me.

Besides they didn't pay me very well. Fuck that.

interesting

is your current work more ethical?

Wow. I do work for the DoD, and I know the systems I maintain are indirectly responsible for death and destruction, but this is next level.

I mean... I guess if it wasn't you user, it would have been someone else. You were just the agent of fate.

I'm actually hoping for a magical part-time gig to pop up with decent pay and benefits, but that just hasn't happened.

Startup has very few all-good reviews which I don't trust since that was the case for my last job.

I'll keep an eye out for red flags. Thanks user.

you're bad and you should feel bad.

>"Data Scientist" has become a popular occupation with Harvard Business Review dubbing it "The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century" and McKinsey & Company projecting a global excess demand of 1.5 million new data scientists. Universities are offering masters courses in data science. Shorter private bootcamps are also offering data science certificates including student-paid programs like General Assembly to employer-paid programs like The Data Incubator.

So in other words, it's one of those bullshit jobs that would never exist if managers knew what their jobs entailed.

I had a job like that once, but I couldn't in good conscience take money for pretending to be doing something important to impress stressed-out morons above me. I went to the big boss and explained that there was no real work being done and he couldn't comprehend it. That's why I laugh every time I see pics of the WTC squishing all those retards.

let me guess, the only jobs worth doing is your job right?

Is there any difference between a statistician and a data scientist?
Does being a data scientist really require such a high level of computer proficiency?

Hey man, if it makes you feel better then more power to ya. Me however, I can't take money for doing nothing and feel good about myself. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING GOOD THESE DAYS?

how is it doing nothing?

I have a BS in math and worked in a Python/R/SQL/Spark environment. Yeah you need to know algorithms/data structures a little, enough to understand time and space complexities, but most of the job is understanding the stats and math.

There's not really a difference except you'll probably expect the statistician to not know distributed computing tech.

First, the term "data scientist" sounded fishy to me. Then when I started trying to figure out what a "data scientist" actually does, I ran into information that didn't make any sense. When something doesn't make any sense, it means someone is making a fool out of someone else, and that's fucky.
Perfect example: look at all the government jobs and compare those with the good that actually gets done by the government. There are government men right now working at poultry plants as "chicken inspectors", and they don't do a damned thing. Not a thing! Yet they get paid to fool people that they're somehow preventing diseases or who knows what.

It comes down to this old adage: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

provide me with 5 recent examples of you 'being part of the solution'

>data science company

That's where you're wrong, user. Data science companies are mostly pushing that. Find a data-driven startup that has a data team. You gather information and make models to tell them how to market or what features they should build. If you do well, they pay well and you helped grow a business which is legitimately trying to provide value to customers, not just push random junk.

I gave out more than five(5) Trump bumper stickers today.

How retarded do you have to be to hire some kid from Harvard to tell you how to sell your own products? Surreal.

Data science is a broad field. It's definitely not all tied to ads.

Don't be so hard on yourself. It's nothing personal: just business.

Complex software products are hard to sell. It's really not that simple user.

i drive semi trucks from railyard to railyard

its good and bad. i barely have any co workers. which is awesome cause the general population is shit and we need a cleansing. every now and then ill see this one guy who will always talk shit about me eating meat. hell proudly boasting how vegan and healthy he is. all while reaching for another cigarette as the one in his mouth starts running out

fucking disgusting

the money is decent. i make more than enough. the hours are decent. im home everyday and the job is easy. although its not something im passionate about i was raised by morons who dont know how to turn on wifi and still believe in flying space daddies. so i think for the situation i was placed in im doing pretty good

eventually i wanna get into electrical engineering. now THATD be dope

you have absolutely no clue what you'e talking about.

If you have no self-esteem, right, go ahead and accept everything they throw at you, this is how it works in a large number of poor countries, sadly.
You musn't do that in a first world country where you can access to and gain knowledge in almost every field. Starting from the bottom at techician level isn't something bad as long as your mind is at peace. A bitching manager is the worst thing that can happens in an office work.

Slave mentality.

Jesus, that's fucked.
For future posts: please don't make a line break (or two, like you did) after every sentence. It makes posts hard to read.

lmao why would they pay for these shitty scripts?

you should have wrote in a gimp for if you decided it was too unethical. by not doing so you are extremely irresponsible and unethical yourself. If people ever find out what you did, in person, you might get murdered by a vindictive widow or family member of someone your death machine fucked over.