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by dysgathhh 3085 days ago
I'm pretty certain data science is worse than normal fields. It's probably due to the fact that huge proportion do have PhDs, but that a PhD is not required for the vast vast vast majority of what we do.

So for instance, I totally feel like a data science imposter, but in the last year have done the following: - Pushed a custom deep learning NLP model to production - Created and maintain company's ETL and data warehouse mechanisms - Performed statistical analyses to find ways to better target and increase customer engagement. - Implemented event tracking and performance metrics across products - A sales prediction product that has contributed to $~5M in incremental revenue

Somebody obviously believes in me since I've grown the team from just myself to ~6, but I also know that I've had dozens of past colleagues that would instantly disqualify me since I 1) don't have a PhD and/or 2) can't/don't read statistics/machine learning papers