[kfk]

I run a small data consulting company and whenever I find an open minded data scientist or analyst I tell them to consider data and software engineering or business analytics (learning about real business problems). DA, BA and SE roles are harder to find, manage more complexity, but most importantly are closer to having an impact as they are the ones close to prod. It’s a hard pitch, especially for juniors, AI and DS are very hyped but it’s hard to guess how much they will grow (or not). My current hunch is that AI and DS will be productized in libraries and services, so the majority of companies will not need people fully dedicated to build models.

[thomzi12]

Yep. In any case, building a model is a just part of the puzzle -- serving it in production is a whole other skillset that is very valuable. imho