Episode 6: Bullshit Jobs in Data Science (and what to do about them)

Hugo speaks with Jacqueline Nolis, Chief Product Officer at Saturn Cloud (formerly Head of Data Science), about all types of failure modes in data science, ML, and AI, and they delve into bullshit jobs in data science (yes, that’s a technical term, as you’ll find out) –they discuss the elements that are bullshit, the elements that aren’t, and how to increase the ratio of the latter to the former.They also talk about her journey in moving from mainly working in prescriptive analytics building reports in PDFs and power points to deploying machine learning products in production. They delve into her motion from doing data science to designing products for data scientists and how to think about choosing career paths. Jacqueline has been an individual contributor, a team lead, and a principal data scientist so has a lot of valuable experience here. They talk about her experience of transitioning gender while working in data science and they work hard to find a bright vision for the future of this industry!LinksJacqueline on twitter (https://twitter.com/skyetetra)Building a Career in Data Science (https://jnolis.com/book/) by Jacqueline and Emily RobinsonSaturn Cloud (https://saturncloud.io/)Why are we so surprised? (http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2016/11/why-are-we-so-surprised.html), a post by Allen Downey on communicating and thinking through uncertaintyData Mishaps Night! (https://datamishapsnight.com/)The Trump administration’s “cubic model” of coronavirus deaths, explained (https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21250641/kevin-hassett-cubic-model-smoothing) by Matthew YglesiasWorking Class Deep Learner (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/working-class-deep-learner?s=r) by Mark Saroufim Get full access to Vanishing Gradients at hugobowne.substack.com/subscribe