Over the last decade, companies have hired thousands of data scientists. These teams often fail to deliver.

To solve this problem, we need analysts and data engineers and software engineers, not more data scientists, writes data scientist, Adam Sroka. Data scientists tend to be inquisitive, researchers with a broad, but shallow skill set. For open ended tasks that require understanding of novel, complex concepts, they can be very good. However, often other skill sets would be more suitable.

For writing business reports and writing and presenting finical information, an analyst would be better. For building and managing data infrastructure and pipeline, a data engineer would be better. And for building robust scalable, interactive software, a software engineer would be better.

Often data scientists end up doing the work that would better be done by other people. These specialists would probably do a better job, faster and cost less.

🛎️ Why this matters: Before you hire a data scientist, work out if you really need one.