‘Data Scientist’ Title Evolving Into New Thing Posted on : Apr 17 - 2019

Who is a data scientist, and what do they do? It’s a worthy question, and one that’s been asked an untold number of times over the years. But now it appears the job definition of the data scientist is changing into something new. The big question, then, is what replaces it?

The traditional definition of a data scientist is somebody who has the requisite skills to build applications that can manipulate large amounts of data to affect some positive change in an organization. The Venn diagram of the data scientist typically shows strength in three overlapping areas: mathematics/statistics, computer science, and business expertise (although there’s often less emphasis on the third category, owing to the rarity of these “unicorns”).

In response to the steep demand for data scientists and the kingly salaries they command, universities revamped their curricula and degree programs, and began churning out freshly minted data scientists ready to spin big data into gold for an eager industry. Fortune 1000 firms and investments banks competed with Web giants to land the smartest “quants” who could lever big data into a competitive advantage. In 2012, Harvard Business Review declared data scientists the “sexiest job of the century.”

But that appears to be old news. Some of the folks who are doing the toughest “data science” work now are no longer calling themselves data scientists, said Ben Lorica, who still held the title of “chief data scientist” for O’Reilly Media as this story went to press.

“I have to say the term data scientist has become muddled a little bit,” Lorica said during his keynote address at the recent Strata Data Conference in San Francisco. “There has been confusion about who to call data scientists.”

Lorica elaborated on his comments later during an interview with Datanami. “I was talking to a technology person in the Bay Area and this person said in this company we have two kinds of data scientists: the data scientist data scientists, and what used to be called the business analyst who did SQL.

“I asked ‘Why are you doing that, because that’s confusing for us on the outside,'” Lorica continued. “If someone says they’re a data scientist, but they’re not, there’s nothing we can do because that’s a career path and people want that title!”

Nothing stays put forever, and in some ways it’s not surprising that the title of data scientist has begun to morph. Addison Snell, the principle analyst at Intersect360 Research, pointed this out during a panel discussion yesterday at Tabor Communications‘ annual Advanced Scale Forum, which is being held this week in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. View More