academic researchers find lucrative work as 'big data' scientists - wsj

8/11/2019 Academic Researchers Find Lucrative Work as 'Big Data' Scientists - WSJ

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TECHNOLOGY

Big Data's High-Priests of Algorithms'Data Scientists' Meld Statistics and Software for Find Lucrative High-Tech Jobs

Aug. 8, 2014 8:11 p.m. ET

For his Ph.D. in astrophysics, Chris Farrell spent five years mining data from a giant

particle accelerator. Now, he spends his days analyzing ratings for YelpInc.

's online business-review site.

Mr. Farrell, 28 years old, is a data scientist, a job title that barely existed three years ago

but since has become one of the hottest corners of the high-tech labor market. Retailers,

banks, heavy-equipment makers and matchmakers all want specialists to extract and

interpret the explosion of data from Internet clicks, machines and smartphones, setting

off a scramble to find or train them.

"People call them unicorns" because the combination of skills required is so rare, said

Jonathan Goldman, who ran LinkedInCorp.'s data-science team that in

2007 developed the "People You May Know" button, which five years later drove more

than half of the invitations on the professional-networking platform.

Employers say the ideal candidate must have more than traditional market-research

skills: the ability to find patterns in millions of pieces of data streaming in from different

sources, to infer from those patterns how customers behave and to write statistical

models that pinpoint behavioral triggers.

At e-commerce site operator Etsy Inc., for instance, a biostatistics Ph.D. who spent

years mining medical records for early signs of breast cancer now writes statistical

models to figure out the terms people use when they search Etsy for a new fashion they

Saba Zuberi, an astrophysicist working as a data scientist at TaskRabbit, said working for a consumer

Internet firm can be surprisingly rewarding. Ramin Rahimian for The Wall Street Journal

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saw on the street.

At mobile-payments startup Square Inc., a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology who wrote

statistical models to examine how people change their political beliefs now looks for

behavioral patterns that would identify which merchants are more likely to have clients

demand their money back.

Another 28-year-old at Yelp, with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, turned his dissertation

research on genome mapping into a product used by the company's advertising team.

The same genome-mapping algorithm is now used to measure the effect on consumers

when multiple small changes are made to online ads.

"Academia is slow and only a few people see your work," said Scott Clark, who designed

the genome-mapping algorithm. "At Yelp, I can be pushing out experiments that affect

hundreds of millions of people. When I make a small change to the Yelp website, I have a

bigger impact."

Some such experiments have raised alarms. FacebookInc. was recently in

the spotlight for an experiment in which its data-science team sought to manipulate

people's emotions by altering the content of their news feeds.

Christian Rudder, president of IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid dating site, recently

disclosed in a blog post that the site manipulated its feeds by inflating the likelihood that

any two people were a match, to encourage them to use the service more.

Mr. Goldman, who now heads a new data-science group at IntuitInc., saidemployers go to great lengths to land top talent. They must be ready to extend an offer at

a moment's notice, often within a day or two of interviewing a candidate, and be prepared

to meet candidates at any hour of the day or night.

While a six-figure starting salary might be common for someone coming straight out of a

doctoral program, data scientists with just two years' experience can earn between

$200,000 and $300,000 a year, according to recruiters.

Anyone with "data science" in his or her job title on a LinkedIn page is going to get "100

recruiter emails a day," said Josh Sullivan, who leads a 500-person data-science group

at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton HoldingCorp. To woo

candidates, Mr. Sullivan goes for a personal touch: sending handwritten letters and flying

across the country to meet potential employees' spouses. He also sends care packages

filled with chocolate, as well as books on academic topics such as statistics and

computer science that he knows the recruit is interested in.

The scarcity is reflected in numbers. Job-listing sites SimplyHired.Com and LinkedIn

currently list between 24,000 and 36,000 openings for positions that have data science in

their titles. Data from a third site showed 6,000 companies were recruiting for such talent

at the end of last year.

In 2012, the most recent year for which the federal government publishes such statistics,

there were roughly 2,500 doctoral degrees awarded in statistics, biostatistics, particle

physics and computer sciencefields from which data scientists are typically recruited,

according to the National Science Foundation. Over the past year, six universities,

including the University of Virginia, Columbia University and Ohio State have launched or

announced plans to launch certificate and master's programs in data science to fill thegap.

To get help, employers are increasingly looking to an elite program called Insight Data

Science Fellows Program, which helps funnel doctoral candidates from fields such as

astrophysics, neuroscience and math into the profession. The program, based near

Stanford University and funded by tech companies, has a 100% placement rate.

Alums work in data-science teams at established Silicon Valley firms as well as startups

such as Airbnb Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and Jawbone. This summer, the program

expanded to New York City, where companies recruiting for data scientists include

ViacomInc. 's MTV, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Capital One

FinancialCorp. and the New York Times.

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WSJ In-Depth

Some data scientists who five years ago would have gone to academia or become Wall

Street quants said they felt the pull of the tech boom because funding for scientific

research tightened up during the recession.

At the health-wearables company Jawbone, a data-science team headed by a former

Insight fellow and computer science Ph.D. discovered that asking users to click a button

called "Today I will" helped them meet their sleep goals. People who clicked the button,

which had them promising to sleep a certain number of hours, went to bed an average of

23 minutes earlier than those who didn't.

Saba Zuberi, an astrophysicist working as a data scientist at TaskRabbit Inc., said

working for a consumer Internet firm can be surprisingly rewarding.

At TaskRabbit, a startup that helps find hired hands for basic chores like packing boxes

or housekeeping, users are shown a listing of potential "rabbits" who can do the tasks.

To create the listings, Ms. Zuberi spent six months building a model that takes into

account a worker's location, scheduling constraints, experience, ratings and payments

rates, and attributes of the person making the request. The more factors that need to be

weighted and matched, the more complex the model, she said.

Over time, the software learns which factors are more important to which customers and

refines the listings. Ms. Zuberi said that while designing algorithms at TaskRabbit may

not be as intellectually challenging as setting out to prove new theories of particle

physics, the work felt more meaningful.

"At the end of the day, who you choose to show isn't just a listing," she said. "It's

something that directly affects people's livelihoods."

Write to Elizabeth Dwoskin at [email protected]

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37 people watching.

Michael Chan

It's too bad that these educated people aren't using their skills to help reducegovernment waste and make it more accountable.

Instead, it's still about the "all about me" and "get rich" mentality. Any wonder why

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government has grown and why lots of people don't care about government muchanymore.

Sales forecasting won't help any company if consumers don't have jobs!

RENZO CUADROS

@Michael Chan- wah wah wah - you could also be helping push down thedeficit by taking less tax deductions.

How about instead of criticizing the choices that others make - you spendmore time improving the choices you make.

I say cheers to these people for helping make things more efficient.

John Elder

Fighting fraud, waste, and abuse in Government is an extremely worthy task! Someprogress is impressive. See the Predictive Analytics World for Governmentconference in DC in September: http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/gov/2014/

CHUAN CHOU

It is fantastic that so many brainiacs are working on how to sell more stuff on Yelp.How about directing a fraction of that brainpower to making government moreefficient and accountable? Fixing a bankrupt welfare state and repairing decrepitinfrastructure seem far more important to me than figuring out how to get people to

click more "Likes" on a website.

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academic researchers find lucrative work as 'big data' scientists - wsj

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