You go to college and go into a ton of debt so you can have a chance at a good job and then when you don’t get a good job are mocked for your poor choice of majors.
The thing is, by the time there’s a formal way for you to learn a field in university, it’s gotten so competitive that you’re probably not going to get a good job.
On top of the gut feel that I have from working in the industry and talking to 100+ people who also do, these two tweets finally convinced me that there is a true data science supply bubble. First, this intro class tweet:
The introductory data science course at @Cal is Data 8. The course is so popular that it’s in Zellerbach Hall. Fall semester 2018, Day 1. pic.twitter.com/VbHtPnikmw
— Mike Olson (@mikeolson) October 4, 2018
and UVA starting up a data science school.
UVA is proud to announce the planned School of Data Science, which will serve one of society’s fastest-growing needs. https://t.co/QlP4OUrTrO
— UVA (@UVA) January 18, 2019
Since academia is typically a lagging indicator in adoption to new trends in the work place, it’s been long enough that it’s truly worrying for junior data scientists, all of who are hoping to find data science positions. It can be very hard for someone with a new degree in data science to find a data science position, given how many new people they’re competing with in the market.
And you’re probably not going to be able to identify in advance what the next big set of jobs is going to be. And even if you do and even if you manage to make a career of it, that career won’t last your life – you’re going to have to constantly retrain.
Right now this often means going back to school, in some form or another, over and over, racking up more and more debt. It’s exhausting and depressing.