[astrophysician]

I'm guessing just venting personal frustrations due to their own experiences, plus maybe poor hiring and guidance of data scientists in their own teams? I have definitely seen DS people in my experience that fit some of the descriptions here, but I think it's a mistake to trivialize the DS position itself. A good DS is a valuable asset, but depending on your company/data, maybe not worth the cost. Plus there is no "single" DS candidate or role, a lot of these roles (data engineer, DS, analyst, swe) blend together at times, and it's about finding the right balance of skills.

Sometimes I think a company (not having the DS experience themselves) mistakenly over-hire DS roles in today's hype of "AI" when their data is mostly run-of-the-mill and only requires simple linear models that can be architected an understood by a stats/math-savvy engineer. Even then, a good DS is still useful (even linear models can be complex: e.g. what priors do you want to use? Do you want a multi-task solution? etc.), but maybe not worth the cost.