Where do data scientists belong?
Data science tip of the day 🤓
Where do data scientists belong in the organization?
Here are three common patterns I’ve observed:
1. Put data scientists into a Research Group/Think Tank where they do pure experimentation.
This might be tempting, but it’s financially risky to prevent data scientists from integrating into the rest of the organization, both for the org (low ROI) and for them (first to get laid off).
2. Turn your data scientists into Business Analysts
Business intelligence data scientists often report up through to the CEO, which provides the most social capital and the best exposure to high priority use cases. But if you notice that your models only ever get “deployed” as PowerPoint presentations, you might start to wonder if you’re making enough real impact.
3. Embed the data scientists in the Engineering team.
There is so much to learn in data science, and so I can understand that it might feel overwhelming to have to learn things like software design, version control, data storage, and file system navigation as well as activation functions, the kernel trick, and heteroskedasticity. But, if you are willing to participate in the engineering culture at your organization, you have the best access to data and the best opportunity to deploy your models to production.
I promise, it’s worth it!
Give Ensign a try: https://rotational.io/ensign/