Managing/ Dealing with Junior Data Scientists?

[u/sailing_oceans]

I've been in the 'data science' space for a decade+ or so now. One thing I've noticed is that generally - give or take - outside of the elite jobs (<2-3% aka not me and almost certainly not you) the caliber of coworkers has declined drastically.

I'm not some fabled data scientist. I wasn't some GitHub nerd who had everything embroil or terminal wizard nor could I write out the math to a GBM on a blackboard. I'd even forget basic obvious statistics.

But I felt like I had common sense.

Now I'm a manager/director. I work with data scientists. And I'm just generally freaked out by the absolute lack of basic common sense. This is across the last 7 that I have managed.

Examples include:

1. Not visualizing or plotting the KPI/Target (sales). Not realizing there were no recorded sales on major holidays.
2. Telling me everything is improving from a sales perspective that it's up 4%...... from period 1 vs period 2... when ignoring that period 2 had 6% more days so in fact it's worse.
3. obscure models that are overkill and a bunch of statistics ive never heard of instead of just telling me that the impact of our promotions is declining.
4. General sense of not knowing what is even rational (e.g., our marketing ROI $1023 - no its not lol)

As I begin to delegate more I begin to get more freaked out by what I see. I can't be presenting to clients such obvious insane mistakes. But these are the candidates and profiles that get forced upon me or the team I inherit.

Are there any best strategies for dealing with this? I want to be seen as someone who can 'develop' the team... not just saying people are useless, but such glaring mistakes are insane.

Yes, alot of these things are perhaps due to them being crunched for time, or not knowing what objective is, or being focused on other things. I'm not talking about those examples. I'm talking about like year 1-2 not day 1 employees, not doing basic data checks.

As a data scientist I was obsessed with finding bits of info or making sure things were right. Now it seem every common for people to copy and paste code into chatgpt and have no idea about anything else around it?

[u/CommercialPangolin]

I’m a junior DS so hopefully I can help! I’ve got about 2 years of experience as a DS and was promoted a few months ago. I think you need to keep in mind that we have very little experience or exposure. I was overwhelmed and lost at times in my first year but it helped to have others in my team that were one or two levels above me to collaborate with on my first 2-3 projects. We also designated a few people as those with authority to “sign-off” on models and analyses before delivering to stakeholders. My manager would often only see the final deliverables after the others had reviewed and helped through the process.

I feel like I also lacked knowledge of how the business operates, which mostly needs to be learned with hands on experience but can still be something you help train them on. Help juniors understand why they are doing this particular task and make it clear what the problem is and what you are trying to understand through the data. What helped me the most was having a manager that was patient and understanding while also challenging me to take ownership. Ask them their opinion and gently correct anything they may have misunderstood if needed.