To fill your dreams, kill the fairy tale. But it has to be done. Let’s just get straight into it, the hard truth that we probably all know but don’t want to accept: the data field is hard right now. I don’t know if I can say that it’s oversaturated, but it’s hard just using LinkedIn alone. There are thousands of listings and each listing has maybe a thousand to two thousand applicants. If it’s remote, if it’s local depending on the area you live in, it has 800 to 200 applicants. Whether it be a data analyst, a data scientist, a data engineer, or any other data-related title that is out there, I’m going to be talking specifically about data scientists.
So, my problem with boot camps and any other program that’s right now telling everyone a dream, encouraging you to sign up, take your money, so you spend thousands of dollars to go through these programs with this guarantee that you’re going to land the job as soon as you finish the program. I don’t think that’s the case, and that’s the hard truth. There’s a pretty good chance you’re not going to like the job as a data scientist after graduation, let it be from college or boot camp. You may get an internship, you may get a job as a data analyst if you want to go that route, fill up the experience, and then move into data science. But you’re probably not going to land the job as a data scientist day one.
There are a few reasons for that. One was the tech layoffs that happened a while back that let in the market with a lot of highly skilled individuals that have more experience than most of us had, so we’re competing with ex-Google, Facebook, and Microsoft engineers and scientists. The field itself has been expanding, and I feel like ever since the emergence of AI and machine learning, web, and because of that, a lot of new people come over to the field, and that’s also flooded the market. And lastly, we just have a lot of employers that they’re, I mean, just a code short taking advantage, really. They know what’s going on, they know that there’s a lot of talent out there that has years of experience, and so they’re requiring crazy amounts of experience for basically entry-level roles, that describing it as something that you know, that disguising it as something that’s not entry-level, but you look at the description and it sounds pretty entry-level, but they’re looking for the folks with all of the years of experience from a fine company or something along those lines.
What do you do? Honestly, I don’t really know. There’s not much that can be done at this point. I think it’s safest to just ride the wave, don’t make any rash decisions, don’t quit your day job with the expectations that we’re going to attend this boot camp, I’m gonna finish this college degree, and then tomorrow I’ll have a job as a data scientist. It probably won’t go that way. I think it’s time we all start waking up and looking past the propaganda, that misleading, looking past the false advertisement, I guess, that these programs are putting out there. As I said earlier, there’s a pretty good chance that whatever they said isn’t going to be the case. If a hundred people attend a program and the program guarantees that within this amount of time, you’re going to have a job as a data scientist, there’s a pretty good chance maybe 10 out of the 100 are going to end up that way, and the other 90, I don’t need you to go on to work as the analyst with the hopes of transitioning into data science someday or just going to give up and go a different route. I’ve seen it happen firsthand, and it sucks. It really does. It sucks to see someone spend their hard-earned money or go into debt for these programs, colleges, boot camps, bosses, whatever you want to call them, just to come out and to see that they put in the work but because they don’t have that experience, that things just don’t work out for them in the beginning.
This is a long game. It’s really how long can you wait and what can you do while you wait? Because like I said, the jobs are there. It’s just the amount of experience that’s being asked for right now. So do anything you can do, just keep on building those projects, I guess apply for jobs and just waiting around and keep your head up. Something’s gonna happen. It’s gonna work out. It’s just a tough time right now, and we just gotta ride it out. But it’s gonna get better. That’s all I have for this topic. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe. There’ll be more things coming on data science, coding, and just everything in between. Of course, I’ll be keeping up with the job market and what’s going on and send any updates that I see. Until the next one.
