Is data science still worth it in 2023

Question

Hello
I have a degree in physics and I want to learn data science is it still worth it in 2023 can I find a job after I finish my studies or this field is dying?!

Answer 1

It is certainly not dying, but it is certainly very competitive at entry levels right now

Answer 2

I would say it’s highly competitive now. 3 years back you could have gotten in with a masters degree relatively easily. Now it’s hard to get in even with a PhD. But totally worth it when it comes to pay. I would say software dev would be a better track. It’s relatively less exploration work compared to data science since software dev has predefined goals.

Answer 3

Based on your research how do you feel about the field and job opportunities?

Answer 4

I think and hope so! I landed a data science job with a BS in IT Management and a fair amount of self-taught programming and analytics experience. I've done lots of Kaggles, machine learning projects, data scraping, and some NLP here and there.  


I start my Masters in Data Science in March and plan to use that as a stepping stone to even more complex Machine Learning / AI applications.

Answer 5

There is a ton of need for understand data both in terms of engineering and analysis. The climate has caused a massive slow down in hiring but the field is definitely not dead.

Answer 6

It’s definitely not dying. I only see it growing immensely however the economy will have to recover first. Overall salaries may come down some over time. It also depends how good you can be at it I suppose.

Regardless the skills you learn will 100% benefit you in any future version of the labor market.

Answer 7

Don't just focus on the job title, focus on the skills and experience. Do you think businesses will need more or less people with applied statistics and the ability to code?

Answer 8

I won't really recommend other suggestions of becoming an analyst first and then working your way up to becoming a Data Scientist. You need to be working full time and studying part time for a decent certificate (an actual certificate from an education institution, rather than a MOOC provider) for the market today.

The skill set of a data analyst and a data scientist are diverging. When I started out 5 years ago, there was so much focus on creating a machine learning model and obtaining insights.

This is not enough today. Companies today want the models to be automated and deployed in a pipeline and want the data scientists to retrain models when a data drift occurs. They also want you to read papers and think how to implement the model in the company. If you are just running jupyter notebooks and getting insights, you won't be at all competitive for a modern DS role in which you must be familiar with skills such as model deployment and hyperparameter tuning, experimenting and implementing a ML model based on academic papers. You will need a company or an institution to teach you these skills.