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Matthew Stoney
CST 300 Writing Lab
01/13/2021
Data Science – A Promising Career?

In the past decades, our reliance on technology has become increasingly abundant. Even

with a near total-immersion in information age wizardry, most people have no idea how any of it

works. From smart phones to artificially intelligent advertising to social media friend

recommendations, there is a lot of complex machinery under the hood that people often take for

granted. One of these is the pervasiveness – and the importance – of data. If anything is certain

about today’s tech industry it is that data is the prime currency. For companies to stay

competitive, it is now vital to process “information and intelligence from all the data being

collected to identify their target customers and sell products and services to them”

(Kambhampaty, 2018). It stands to reason that if technology is important to the daily lives of

consumers and data is the tool that companies use to understand consumer needs, there is going

to be an ever-increasing demand for data and all things related to it. According to The Bureau of

Labor Statistics, Data Scientist job growth (under the broader designation of “Computer and

Information Research Scientist”), is expected to grow about fifteen percent annually through

2029, which is much faster than average (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). These facts lead to

the conclusion that data science is a field that has great career potential in the near future. This

paper will explore the field of data science by giving an overview of the industry, analyzing a

major corporation that utilizes data science, and offering some potential strategies for those who

wish to enter into the field.

Data science is a promising field in computer science and technology industries that

focuses on the processing of generally large amounts of data. But before we can understand data
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science, we must first answer one question: what is data? Most people probably think of data as a

collection of related information such as stock transaction records or sports statistics. However,

in computer science the definition is slightly more specific. According to Iliya Valchanov, there

are two types of data: traditional and big data (2018). Valchanov explains that traditional data is

information that is structured and stored in computer database tables and contains numeric or text

information. This could be a spreadsheet of payroll information at a company, for example. Big

data, on the other hand, is much more unwieldy. According to Valnachov, it is bigger than

traditional data in variety and volume and is usually stored across an entire network of storage

computers. This means the data could contain images, videos, voice recordings and much more.

The trade-off of this variety of data is that much more storage space is needed, up to one billion

times as much. This kind of data storage and processing is what huge internet companies like

Facebook require. With billions of users worldwide posting images, sharing videos and sending

messages, the amount of data that Facebook uses can be difficult to fathom. This storage and

processing of huge amounts of data was impossible until recent years due to the industry

limitations. The development of technologies such as Hadoop (a distributed file system), cloud

computing and data visualization really made big data not only relevant, but important to

business and research (Davenport & Patil, 2017). The vast amount of data that modern

companies are creating and storing requires new techniques and skill-sets in order to access and

dispense information in a timely manner. Imagine a huge dragon sitting mightily atop an

enormous pile of gold. Now imagine the dragon wanted to find a Mint 1942 U.S. Silver Dollar

that it knew was hidden somewhere in the pile. How would the dragon even go about it? Where

would it even begin? These are essentially the questions that companies need to answer in order
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to provide their services to customers on a global scale. For the solutions to these problems and

many others, both dragons and companies alike turn to data scientists.

With the massive amounts of information being transmitted and received, it becomes

difficult to make sense of it all. The key idea here is that while raw data is a vital resource, it is

meaningless without effective ways to handle it. According to the UC Berkeley School of

Information, handling large amounts of data involves five fundamental elements: capturing,

maintaining, processing, analyzing and communicating (“What is Data Science?”, n.d.). Big data

can be collected from nearly anywhere, from social media platforms to weather records to jet

airplane flight telemetry. Once collected the data must be stored efficiently so that it can be

quickly and reliably accessed. Data scientists must also clean the data to remove any garbage

information. Next the data is run through a custom mining program that will sift through it and

pull out relevant items. This is followed by statistical analysis which is used to generate a

predictive model of behavior or to demonstrate a trend. The final element is communicating the

results. This is often done through the use of visualizations such as charts and graphs, as well as

written reports. The information communicated in this step is the vital intelligence that final

decisions will be based upon. For example, an American car manufacturer could be using data

analysis to determine whether or not the European automobile markets are going to show high

demand for Sport Utility Vehicles over the next decade. This analysis would inform them

whether or not they should consider spending money on further research and development of a

new prototype. The accuracy of such a report in this example could be the basis for a very

successful or very disastrous business decision. As the information age progresses, markets

widen to broader consumer bases that span continents and it becomes increasingly essential for
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even smaller businesses to rely on data in this way. While it may have been commonplace in the

past for people to make business decisions based on a gut feeling, that practice has been

superseded by data analysis.

Data scientists are software engineers that wear many hats. Their abilities to analyze and

present intelligible data are important for any business, but their techniques of sorting and storing

data are also invaluable within the tech industry. Any website that sees high traffic or has a large

user base needs cutting edge data handling in order to continue to serve information up quickly

and neatly to its users. A great example of such a company is Facebook.

Facebook is a company that focuses on social connections between its users. Since its

inception in 2004, Facebook has grown and impacted the lives of nearly half the population of

over three billion people (“Facebook Company Info”, 2021). From newborns featured proudly to

the most seasoned of seniors, Facebook has become an institution within our lives. As a social

media platform, Facebook allows users to customize their profiles, connect with and message

friends and colleagues, post status updates to their timeline, create and manage Facebook groups

for like-minded individuals, stream live video from anywhere with internet access, buy and sell

in the Facebook marketplace and much more. But it wasn’t always this complex.

Facebook originally began as a site for Harvard University students to stay connected with

each other. According to Niels Brügger (2021), it only initially allowed students to create their

own profiles with personal information so that they could maintain contact throughout their

tenure; signing up only required a Harvard email address and that users be at least eighteen years

old. Brügger explains that the site quickly gained popularity and expanded to other Ivy League

schools, then eventually to all universities and finally to the rest of the world. Along the way,
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Facebook continually managed to evolve in order to keep users coming back. That is the true

genius of a social media platform as a business. Facebook does not sell products in the traditional

sense. What they offer, however, is a convenient way for people to exchange their own social

currencies in the form of human interactions. It is no surprise that the commodification of human

interaction became immensely popular. Since Facebook sells no real products and does not

charge users for its main services, how did the company reach annual revenues of $1.5 billion by

2013 (AstrumPeople, n.d.)? The short answer is advertising. With the potential to reach an

audience of millions, businesses quickly figured out that putting their ads on Facebook could be

very impactful.

At the helm of this powerful corporation is founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, a

mysterious and controversial figure. According to his Biography.com profile, Zuckerberg showed

an early and keen interest in computers: he developed his own chat software at age twelve,

programmed games and even a music application similar to today’s widely popular Pandora. His

intellect landed him at Harvard university where he “developed a reputation as the go-to software

developer on campus” (Biography.com Editors, 2019), but he dropped out of the Ivy Leagues

and moved to California to continue developing and expanding Facebook. Since then Zuckerberg

has been named Time Magazine’s Person of The Year 2010, been portrayed by actor Jesse

Eisenberg in a major motion picture ‘The Social Network’ as well as amassed billions of dollars

in personal wealth (AstrumPeople, n.d.).

Despite his unprecedented success as a vanguard of the new social media industry, many

controversies surround Zuckerberg. For example, mere weeks after Facebook became an official

site, journalistTimothy McGinn reported that Harvard students Divya Narendra , Cameron
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Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea and source code

while working for them on a similar project (McGinn, 2004). More recently, Facebook came

under extreme scrutiny from the public and the U.S. government. According Zuckerberg’s profile

on Biography.com, the controversy was for allowing the propagation of fake news leading up to

the 2016 Presidential election, as well as an enormous breach of over 87 million user’s data by a

firm with ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign (Biography.com Editors, 2019). The article also

explains that although Zuckerberg apologized and promised his users that he would do better,

investor confidence was already shaken and lawmakers were desperate to question him in

hearings. Because of these types of scandals, Facebook has earned a negative reputation, with

many calling for a boycott of the website and some investors calling for Zuckerberg’s resignation

as CEO (Biography.com Editors, 2019). Despite these scandals, Facebook remains a strong

company and is considered one of the top tech companies to work for in many fields, including

data science.

Gaining employment as a data scientist can be trickier than it seems. Many programming

jobs require only a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and often times self-taught workers ar

even qualified enough if the demand is high. However since the role of data scientist is multi-

faceted, anyone looking to enter into this field would do well to have a solid plan of action.

Nedko Krastev of the Oracle AI & Data Science Learning Blog undertook a study of 1,170 data

scientist job listings in 2020 and the results were very insightful. Krastev found that the majority

of data science jobs were posted by very large corporations and that most companies gave

roughly equal weight to bachelor’s and master’s degrees when looking for candidates (2020).

This is advantageous to someone who is looking to change careers into data science, since the
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educational barrier to entry is not as high as one might think. However potential candidates still

need to be on top of their data science skills before entering into the field. In addition to Python

and similar programming language competencies, employers are seeking candidates with

machine learning, statistics, data visualization and database knowledge as well as excellent

communication skills and the ability to function in a team setting (Krastev, 2020).

There are several classes required by the CS Online program at CSU Monterey Bay that

can help develop the skills needed to become a data scientist (“Computer Science, BS Online”,

n.d.). First is CST 363 – Introduction to Database Systems, which would be vital to both data

science as well as web development and many other fields. CST 300 – The Major Pro Seminar,

as well as CST 462S – Race, Gender, Class in the Digital World are both required courses that

would help enormously with the communication and teamwork skills that employers are seeking.

In addition there is an elective, CST 383 – Introduction to Data Science that should give anyone

interested in the field a great overview and some experience with the techniques and

technologies they will need.

In addition to university coursework, there are other ways to increase the chance of finding

employment. Having a portfolio of personal projects is very useful. These projects can be any

substantial pieces of coding written during school or personal time. A great example for data

science would be to acquire a large data set (many can be found for free) and turn it into some

piece of actionable intelligence in the form of graphs, charts and reports. Even better if it is a

web application that has customizable user functionalities. One such example is a web app that

takes Major League Baseball statistics, analyzes them and presents the results in a fast and user-
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friendly format for anyone into sports betting or fantasy baseball leagues. Having one or more

finished projects like this to show to employers looks very good on a resume.

Although the field of data science is fairly new, it has grown tremendously in recent years

and shows strong signs of continuing this growth as more companies realize how necessary it is.

Data has become the gold standard of the tech industry and the need for people to manage the

massive amounts of data we send and receive is going to continue to rise. Companies like

Facebook have demonstrated that successfully handling big data can be extremely profitable, and

sometimes even dangerous in terms of ethics. But despite the challenges, careers in data science

are proving to be extremely worthwhile for individuals who have the drive and skill to take on

the challenge.
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References

AstrumPeople. (n.d.). Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and

CEO. https://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-

founder-and-ceo/

Biography.com Editors. (2019, October 24). Mark Zuckerberg.

https://www.biography.com/business-figure/mark-zuckerberg

Brügger, N. (2014). A brief history of Facebook as a media text: The development of an empty

structure. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5423/4466#p1

Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020, September 01). Computer and Information Research

Scientists: Occupational Outlook Handbook. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-

information-technology/computer-and-information-research-scientists.htm

CSU Monterey Bay (n.d.). Computer Science, BS Online Degree Completion.

https://catalog.csumb.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=1&poid=218

Davenport, T. H., & Patil, D. J. (2017, May 26). Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st

Century. https://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century

Facebook Company Info. (n.d.) (2021, January 11). https://about.fb.com/company-info/

Kambhampaty, S. (2018, July 23). Council Post: It's All About Data.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/07/23/its-all-about-data/?

sh=4637a1386855

Krastev, N. (2020, October 22). Study: What are the requirements for data scientist jobs in

2020? https://blogs.oracle.com/datascience/data-scientist-job-requirements-2020
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McGinn, T. J. (2004, May 28). Online Facebooks Duel Over Tangled Web of Authorship.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/5/28/online-facebooks-duel-over-tangled-web/

Vlachanov, I. (2018, June). The What, Where and How of Data for Data Science.

https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/06/what-where-how-data-science.html

U.C. Berkeley (n.d.). What is Data Science? https://ischoolonline.berkeley.edu/data-

science/what-is-data-science/