Ostensibly, it may seem that being a data scientist is all sunshine and rainbows (at least I think that is the perception I give from my posts!). High pay, great benefits, flexible hours, and interesting work are some things that come to mind when thinking about a data science job.
Heck, I even wrote a whole article on why data science is a cool job!
While these are all definitely true, every job has some hidden struggles behind the scenes, and a data scientist is no exception. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic job, and I absolutely love the field, but not every day is completely glorious.
That’s why in this article, I want to dive into several realities or principles you must accept as a data scientist and ones I face regularly. Hopefully, this will help anyone reading this post who wants to be a data scientist to decide if this field is really for them.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, it’s no secret that AI took the world by storm last year. Most people would roll their eyes if you mentioned AI, but now ChatGPT is a household name.
The rise of generative AI is just one example of how dynamic data science and machine learning is. When I started working as a data scientist in September 2021, there was no text-to-image generation (DALL-E), GitHub Copilot, or ChatGPT. These tools are now the ones I use daily!