[timr]

"I think that pretty much all quantitative PhD's are going to be close to "data scientists"."

Exactly. Fundamentally, "data science" is known far more widely by its other name: science. Yet we've reached the bizarro-world place where there are huge numbers of un- or under-employed scientists looking for work, while companies are freaking out about hiring the "rare" computer programmer who happens to know some statistics and self-identifies as a "data scientist". It's rather absurd.