[gota]

All this means is that we will inevitably reach a point where separate titles are used, and 'data scientist' will means about as much as 'engineer'.

We will distinguish 'machine learning specialist data scientist' from 'database specialist data scientist' just like we distinguish 'electrical engineer' from 'lab systems engineer', for example.

Then, we might have a term for generalists like 'data science technician'. And by then, the people who 'aren't really good at any aspect of it' and can't really function as generalists will be naturally sorted out because they can't really fit into any of those titles

[thousandautumns]

The thing is that we already have/had that. Data science is really just a blend of statistics, machine learning, data engineering, and software development. I think the data science explosion is the result of more people/companies wanting to hire a single person to do all of these jobs rather than individuals for each.

If we ever go back to a world where we distinguish people by these specialties we would basically just be going back a decade to where we had statisticians focusing on statistics, data engineers maintaining databases, software developers creating the prodect, etc. (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

[mykull]

You hit me right in the feels, bud.