[moonchrome]

>We want it, but not for the going rate.

Does it cost 500k$/year for someone who got in that field to be in net positive ? I mean I know that people in US are complaining about high cost of higher education - but 500k$/year for it to be viable career path ? I think saying there is a shortage is justified, if the salaries are decent (and from anecdotal evidence I know that they are) people should be made aware that this field might be worth entering and that they should look in to it.

[earl]

pmb is (correctly) saying that there is, by definition, no shortage of big data people. There's just a shortage at the (obviously below market clearing) price employers wish to pay. Also, you're ignoring the steep lead time to become a deep expert in stats / ML -- most likely a PhD plus significant programming time plus work experience.

[moonchrome]

>by definition, no shortage of big data people

Shortage is defined by price being above the market equilibrium, we can debate what the equilibrium is but I think even at the current wages people should be interested in getting in to this field (I know a friend who is doing postgrad in math and interning for BI because the prospects are great), it's just that they can't get in fast enough - therefore IMO there is a temporary shortage.

>most likely a PhD plus significant programming time plus work experience.

Is it normal to expect 500k$/year for that experience in some other field ? I would sure like to know, maybe I can still switch :) I mean I know there are people making that kind of money but it can't be the average for PhD with work expirience ?

[pfedor]

Of course, by that definition, there is never a shortage of anything.

[arjunnarayan]

This is a very good quersion, and made me think a little. Here's my stab at it:

If we define the shortage as "shortage of people willing to do X for $200,000 a year", that's clearly a bad definition. You should just pay more (as earl suggested) to get what you want. But what if that's just not possible on a macro level?

Consider if you have an aggregate demand of "the market needs a total of 500 Data scientists". If there are only 250 data scientists in the world, their salaries will be bid up, then I can see somebody crying that there's a shortage for affordable data scientists (whatever that means). But any capitalist will tell you that they're just looking for a free sailboat. On the other hand, the 250 data scientists are being paid a lot, and on some level skills are somewhat fungible, so you end up with non-data scientists (maybe vanilla statisticians/actuaries) moving sideways to get in on this payday. So you have some retraining, and in the long run things tend to work out. So there's no shortage.

But in the long run we are all dead. Thus even if we define a shortage as the shortfall in supply at _any_ price, this isn't sufficient. In the short run there can very well be a shortfall.

If it takes 3 years to train a data scientist (I'm just making stuff up here), and there are 250 data scientists on the market, if you have an aggregate demand for 500 data scientists _today_ --- completely price unconditional --- you just cannot fill it. Price is almost irrelevant (on the macro level --- you as an individual can always outbid your competitors). There is a temporal shortage that cannot be filled.

I think this is the precise definition of what a shortage is that you are looking for. Shortages exist in the macro scale. Shortages do not exist for individual companies (they should just pay more, and if the benefits are not worth the cost of hiring, there isn't a shortage, they're just cheap).

[joe_the_user]

Well, I applaud your effort but you've missed things.

The market doesn't need anything, human beings need and desire things and, in the capitalist model, the market is the means to balance those needs and desires things.

If 50 entrepreneurs desire 500 data scientists for their enterprises and only 250 fifty such scientists are on offer, they'll bid up the prices until some of them decide "I don't want them that much" and then we're done.

Of course, if our 50 entrepreneurs all have vast, vast wealth and a very strong desire for those scientists, we may see them creating bootcamps for quick data scientist development or whatever. Then they might indeed wind-up another 250 data scientists and again, we're done with no mystery.

Of course, you could argue that markets aren't as efficient as some claim but that's just about irrelevant to our reasoning here since we're mostly reasoning by definitions and extreme and so the OP basically holds true - you say you want but you've shown you don't want it that much and so you're really blowing smoke...

[joe_the_user]

By that definition, the only absolute shortage is in things that aren't available at any price.

There can still be a relative shortage. There's shortage of gold-per-pound relative to rocks-per-pound, for example