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Could I still have a promising career in tech without learning data science?

2 points by slategruen ↗ HN
I'm currently in my senior year of university and a lot of my peers have been discussing career paths they plan to get into. A lot of them seems to be looking forward to getting into data science and engineering. However, for me personally, I kind of hate working on stuff related to data. I have a project focusing on computer vision which serves as a primer to students in data science field but I dread working on it and most of the concepts I'm learning aren't really appealing.

4 comments

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jollofricepeas
No, not really since Big Data became a thing. Everyone is expected to know the basics. You’re early in your career so you have a lot of flexibility.

Do what you love. Tech sales isn’t really focused on data and they are well-paid. Most medical fields with the exception of epidemiology aren’t focused on data as an example either if you’re looking for a career that pays well.

Once you have children and big bills it becomes harder to make big transitions.

stitched2gethr
Absolutely. The tech field is broad and deep. There are plenty of tech jobs which have nothing to do with data science. Data science is honestly a pretty small part of the tech landscape.
seventyheads
Definitely. You can try stuff like - UI/UX design, backend development, app development etc.
baash05
100%.. Data science jobs only really come into play in companies with loads of data.

Most start up's won't hit a point where they have enough data to need something, for years.

Client side data science isn't really a thing, so you're good with web, mobile and desk apps.

IOT stuff has no real data science in it. (Your fridge isn't running much in the way of stats)

In 20 years of pro dev, I've worked with hundreds of devs, and only 3 data science people.