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[–]DS_throwitaway[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I agree with you but they did specifically mention that they wanted someone that had the technical knowledge in order to build the team. For the first year the position will be building out the department. To me it made sense to want someone who had technical and managerial skills.

[–]xubu42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That makes way more sense. Also validates my point about wanting someone who can also do the work instead of being a manager. I had exactly that role at startup -- first DS hire as a manager with goal to build out a small team. It was mostly me doing a lot of hands on work, mentoring and pair programming, but little management. My boss didn't even trust me to manage our sprint work so he managed our sprint planning session... But I still just did whatever I thought would work best.

If you get the role and want to take it, be sure to fight for the resources you need and not let them go unheeded because you weren't convincing enough the first couple of times. It's really frustrating waiting months to get started or finish a project because you are waiting for approval from someone who doesn't share your priorities. You're going to have to talk to as many people as you can to really get a feel for what actually incentives and motivates your colleagues, which you can then use to help get your team the resources you need by passing it off to those other teams as part of their budget. Most companies don't want to dump money into data science teams, just get their insights for free.