What I Learned in my First Year as a Director of Data Science

Six months ago I noticed that there were not many posts out there about how to manage a data science team (versus data science projects, a topic that has considerably more content). In an attempt to address that gap, I wrote my original post: <a href="https://medium.com/towards-data-science/what-i-learned-in-my-first-6-months-as-a-director-of-data-science-d9b7b98a48f7" rel="noopener">“What I Learned in my First Six Months as a Director of Data Science.”</a> The response was largely positive to that post, so I decided that, now that I have been in the role of Director of Data Science for 1 year, I would update the original post based on the next 6 months of my experience. Some of the learnings are unchanged, although I have observed new things about them or have learned more details about them. Others have changed in the evolving layoff situations in the tech world. For more background on myself and why I started writing about these things, please see my original article. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:630/0*hbr7r8rJK-Uo4xCU" style="height:525px; width:700px" /> Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@joaoscferrao?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">João Ferrão</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Unsplash</a> <h1>Hiring is still my number 1 challenge</h1> When I wrote the original post in November of 2022, the tech layoffs had just started picking up steam. I started to feel very optimistic about there being a change in the hiring market. My management started feeling optimistic that there would be a change in the salary expectations and offers for data scientists as a result. Simply put, that didn’t pan out. I joined several online forums established to help those laid off in tech find new jobs. However, I quickly noticed that the data scientists and machine learning engineers were not really there in great numbers. I also noted that my friends working in the field at these companies were not being laid off. My (anecdotal) conclusion to this is that data scientists still have a fair bit of job security in the tech world, including with the FAANG companies. Those that I have found that have been laid off have been quickly scooped up by other tech companies. So in this regard, my hiring situation has not changed in the past 6 months even though the tech world has. <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/what-i-learned-in-my-first-year-as-a-director-of-data-science-76b79f26b09c">Click Here</a>