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by thegginthesky 1214 days ago
I really like your heuristic, and I'll add to your list of examples where one could work

- Any tech company where the Stats/ML model is one of THE products and differentiators. You'll need to cut through a lot of buzz word and sales-speak to find the good ones.

- Banks and other financial institutions where making uneducated guess is a big no-no when it comes risk, pricing and anything related to financial products. Your example of Credit Risk Modeling is a classic example and very interesting problem.

- As much as consultancy gets a bad rep due to some shady practice from big players, there exists a solid demand for professionals that know Statistics in the Large Construction Projects space. Let's say modeling demand and return financial for a project, proving environmental impact, preparing/implementing/analyzing unbiased surveys in the area, and so on.

- Government agencies where data is one of the Key Outputs. Such as the Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CDC, and so many others.

As you said, sometimes it will mean a pay cut, especially if you want to remain in the technical work and not deal with the business and managerial side of things. But there's solid demand.

1 comments

+1 for government. I work with state and local governments a fair bit, and while there’s a lot of red tape and weird politics, the overwhelming majority of clients I work with are smart, capable, highly mission driven people doing their best in a system designed to move slowly. Being able to look back on a project and see a positive impact in a community is way more rewarding than trying to move the needle on click through. And the pay cut for public sector consulting isn’t as much as one would think. Especially for federal.