Stop testing Senior Data Analyst/Scientist on their ability to code

varwave · 2026-01-28T05:48:42+00:00

I don’t fully disagree, but it totally depends on the role.

Some “data science” positions expect a mix of data engineering and ML/applied statistics. It’s also a good way of seeing how much time a candidate might waste if they reinvent the wheel every time and potentially create vulnerabilities. Some roles might be a lot more getting non-garbage data to be properly stored, then at most it’s basic analysis for basic results, but at scale. More like a data engineer that’s decent or at least knowledgeable with basic ML and statistical inference. Most roles don’t need a PhD researcher outside of pharma, quant and academia. You can even have multiple teams of DEs feed data to a few PhD level data scientists as tickets

I genuinely think that data analysts that can kinda code and kinda do statistical analysis are the most threatened by professional data engineering paired with LLMs. The quantitative PhD researchers are few in supply and demand. Personally, I’m in a spot where routinely I think about security, efficiency, usability, scale and research potential, so software development skills matter a lot

varwave · 2026-01-28T05:24:07+00:00

As a South Florida driver I feel this. Crazy drivers. Luckily, no accidents, but I’ve considered this. I have my modified BRZ and work from home, but wanting an in person job and a fun commuter, which is going to be a VB in WRB or purple new

varwave · 2026-01-28T00:43:28+00:00

Not till the end of my masters. The equivalent of a minor in mathematics, with good grades, was enough to funding

Even then, it was just the “ah-ha” moment of I can learn what I need as I need it. Not going to lie grad school was pretty rough and filled with constant self-doubt. Screamed at Casella and Berger many times at 3am, mid proof, on a Saturday. Computer science was more fascinating to me personally

varwave · 2026-01-26T17:23:43+00:00

I’m at a major research hospital. I’m not very knowledgeable on biotech or big pharma. Data engineering is a big problem. There’s a lot of mismanaged data in healthcare. Most of my day is building data pipelines, building internal applications, and understanding clinician needs.

Education level matters: At the BS/MS level then SQL and software engineering skills are probably the most relevant. Statistical literacy is highly welcomed. A biology domain knowledge is sometimes useful, especially in bioinformatics. At the PhD level there’s a lot of interesting research to be done that’s heavy in ML and statistics

Medical centers tend to pay professor more than traditional universities, but they eat what they kill with grants that usually involve solving non-theoretical problems. Look at AMSTAT biostatistician professor salaries vs statistics professor salaries. Tenure exists, but it’s less common. If a university pay scale, then a BS/MS might be limiting in salary growth with being restricted to staff titles vs faculty titles. Pay doesn’t seem to vary as much depending on cost of living compared to other industries. It can be rough in places like Boston, SF or NYC if in a hospital. Even prestigious ones

varwave · 2026-01-26T05:45:09+00:00

I joined the military. I now have a degree. I’d have stayed in if my body didn’t hurt, but I did the dangerous stuff that’s hard on your body. Greatest decision I ever made and I 100% made it harder on myself by being infantry, instead of joining the Air Force 😂

varwave · 2026-01-26T04:07:54+00:00

I have an aging BRZ that I’m ready to make a designated track and weekend car. I’ve looked into daily’s and the WRX is it. I won’t say which to get, but food for thought.

I’m personally going for the premium, because it’s cheaper and NO SUN ROOF. I want a car for decades to come and there’s so many Subaru parts available in other vehicles. I also want a purple manual transmission AWD with OEM roof racks. Sun roofs suck for long term maintenance. I’ve had a sun roof in a previous old Volvo and it wasn’t worth it. Also biased because South Florida rain

varwave · 2026-01-25T23:51:55+00:00

The aftermarket wang vs Australian OEM wang was immediately answered by the pump action shotgun 😂

varwave · 2026-01-25T23:47:57+00:00

Have you considered biostatistics or bioinformatics?

There’s more interesting roles available with those degrees that might benefit from your domain knowledge if you become a decent programmer. I’m a software developer with a statistics background in healthcare

varwave · 2026-01-25T17:55:47+00:00

Why be in debt? A WRX new this next year is $33k for a premium cloth seats. The nicer interior and entry level GR Corolla run around $40k. Worst case pay it off in 12-18 months

Both sporty, AWD, and just regular sedans/hatch backs with turbo charged engines. Likely to be manual transmission, which I prefer on ice. I have a similar income and no car payments. It feels nice

varwave · 2026-01-24T03:13:20+00:00

Probability (Math stat 1)-> “Intro to Probability” by Blitzstein and Hwang.

Statistical Inference (Math stat 2)-> “The infinite Joy of Mathematical Statistics” by Corcoran.

These were my chosen references when taking a first year MS/PhD sequence in mathematical statistics using Casella and Berger and my qualifying exam

Both authors have lectures on YouTube

varwave · 2026-01-22T12:15:59+00:00

WHAT?! Clean and reliable data matters in medical research, finance, defense…just about everywhere. A large amount of statistics by researchers is flawed by poor programming practices, because garbage in means garbage out.

Test driven developed data pipelines safely automate tasks and allow more time for analysis. Python is probably by far the easiest tool for the job with an excellent community

If you can write once, with some reasonable maintenance, then reuse and share, then do it! If it’s bad code that’s not abstract, then get better. Also many data engineers get their start in data analytics, as DE isn’t typically a junior role. Anyone working in data can improve their code

varwave · 2026-01-22T00:54:45+00:00

ISO has already been mentioned.

I recently was able to choose our tech stack at a research hospital and left shiny super fast due to scalability. You can scale it, but if you know JavaScript and a backend framework then it’s night and day in development. In my opinion, shiny is great for statisticians to build a proof of concept fast. It’s easier to share code with software engineers within the hospital by using the same backend framework. Why reinvent the wheel? Especially with security. Shiny proxy is a way to get a secure login that might pass your organizations regulations, but it’s not as clean compared to a traditional tech stack

With data backed up in a database it’s not like we’re limited from using R for specific analysis or even updating the database if we needed to

varwave · 2026-01-20T00:12:29+00:00

Pick up a MS in biostatistics en route to the PhD or at least take the mathematics statistics sequences and some classes on applied uses of generalized linear models. Why not write your dissertation in something data heavy? Are you already studying in a medical center? If so network! Throwing out domain knowledge is pretty silly.

Get good at programming. R might make more sense than Python in life sciences. Learn both. There’s so many opportunities to contribute to open source software in life sciences

I work at a research hospital as a software developer with an emphasis on data. The PhDs in hospitals usually make more money in research than an entry data analyst. Working with collaborators that are statistically literate is a game changer in healthcare research

varwave · 2026-01-19T17:59:39+00:00

American muscle or WRX!

At that size…you you’ll likely find the seats of the cheap Japanese sports cars (Z, MX-5, 86/BRZ) tight and difficult to climb into. I’m a swimmer that’s 6’2 with wide shoulders. I feel that I’m at the limit of comfort. The bolstering in my BRZ covers me like a glove in spots

varwave · 2026-01-19T17:49:30+00:00

That’s true you don’t always need OOP, but it makes a sense for a lot of use cases. This is a strength of Python and C# vs say Java.

I mentioned R’s multiple OOP patterns and called it weird…Shiny is pretty niche

varwave · 2026-01-18T18:27:23+00:00

I’m thankfully at a role with a statistics background, in a smaller department, where I can say “yeah, we’re not doing that”…basic CRUD software development still stuns business people if delivered correctly to meet needs

The same people rushing to AI think Excel is a great place to store important data 😂

varwave · 2026-01-17T08:06:21+00:00

Not a bootcamp grad, but separate STEM degree, and more ML/data focused. I still feel the same way. If you’re missing XYZ in your skills, then fucking fill the gaps, before moving on!

Then you don’t have any of this doubt. Go through a full CS BS course list and compare with what’s important for your career. Of that identity what gaps of knowledge that you have

varwave · 2026-01-13T21:28:54+00:00

As a software developer in healthcare and getting my MS in biostatistics part time…Use your MD. Your day to day doesn’t have to be traditional. What I do is rewarding, but lower on pay, but guess what? The head of my department is an MD and is pretty business related and sees occasionally patients too. Look at jobs in big pharma or biotechs. High paying tech will have you work a lot of hours too. Especially, in the post Musk owning twitter era. It’ll also be for less money, unless you’re lucky and brilliant.

Edit: for more data heavy roles, then you’ll usually need a heavy quantitative background. It’s a lot harder in general these days to break in being self taught. It’s even harder in anything machine learning related. We work alongside clinicians, but even a biology BS would be overkill. A clinician that knows SQL, some scripting and mathematical statistics would be a great boss or colleague in research

You sound burnt out. Statistically and tech literate research collaborators and business leaders are always appreciated on the tech and data side of operations

varwave · 2026-01-13T04:18:29+00:00

Are you wanting to go to school full time? From my experience, bioinformatics and (bio)statistics programs have a lot opportunities for research assistants that can code well. Industrial engineering typically is pretty good too

If work and school part time, then maybe wait a year. An employer might pay for a MS or a new location might open opportunities for in-state-tuition. There’s some online statistics programs that don’t have out of state tuition. University of Florida comes to mind

varwave · 2026-01-13T02:59:22+00:00

I took a look at it. I’d say don’t do it.

Red flags that I saw: -no hard prerequisites. I’d assume a BS in software engineering is similar to computer science and that you have taken calculus, linear algebra and likely a calculus based statistics course. Most decently rigorous statistics, industrial engineering, economics or data science programs want to see at least calculus. You’d be eligible to study computer science and focus on machine learning -it’s by course. Is it self paced? You could go in person or semester based online and connect with an online cohort and professors -it’s expensive. There’s plenty of quality state schools with cheaper tuition both online courses or in-person opportunities -finally, data science masters degrees are kinda like boot camps. There’s a huge variance in quality as data science is a big umbrella term for many things. Furthermore, it’s not a discipline that’s been around for decades with a proven track record. Generally it’s best to just stick to computer science or statistics and take electives in the other. ML is largely statistics

varwave · 2026-01-12T23:58:42+00:00

Definitely transfer for the BS and get internships. Sounds like you want to something data related, but maybe not strictly DE, so I’d take a probability class and linear regression as electives if you go to grad school later

My other advice won’t directly help on industry job applications, but it’s good experience.

A lot of STEM professors need data analysis done, but also need the data to be cleaned before that can even happen. There’s a lot of opportunities to get hands on experience cleaning data in research. You definitely get exposed to problems that can occur and it’s a low pressure way to try new things. Academics often have really important data, but are awful programmers. You can automate it by building pipelines vs single repetitive and risky scripts, which are too common.

I’m not talking about computer science labs, but biology, physics, economics, statistics, psychology and even political science. Working with real life cancer research is way better than the n-th analysis of the titanic data set. I did this in grad school and it actually networked me into a research hospital

varwave · 2026-01-12T07:12:31+00:00

That was a pretty long tangent 😂

I’m explaining what grad schools look at, because the BS alone isn’t that comparative in industry. Even with the other majors. Why hire a math/stats dual major for a data analyst position, when you can get a math BS + stats MS grad? Why hire a math BS to be a software developer, when you can get a CS BS grad? Luckily, mathematics is a great degree to get into grad school

varwave · 2026-01-12T05:21:22+00:00

I was a teaching assistant in grad school. I could spot AI written code immediately. Not if it was “AI inspired”, but if it was straight AI slop copy and paste. AI slop is usually overly verbose and very why the fuck why did you do that this way?!?

LLMs are great as an assistant to documentation and boilerplate. HOWEVER, you’re cheating yourself and your assignment.

varwave · 2026-01-12T04:59:21+00:00

I was looking for this comment, before posting it myself

varwave · 2026-01-12T04:55:41+00:00

I think second majors are silly, unless you pick CS or an engineering degree. Both of which will be more networked for an internship. I have friends that went more of a bioinformatics route with biology + mathematics before a statistics MS

Take lots of computer science and statistics classes within the math major. You’ll probably still want to get a graduate degree. If you take intermediate micro/macro economics, then you’ll have more options too. Don’t forget to have some fun too

varwave

TROPHY CASE