back to article Big Data's being held back by little talent, says Huawei head techie

Big data projects – seen by some as the tech industry’s latest snake oil and others as a potentially valuable tool to dig up fresh information – is being held back by the lack of data scientists for hire. This is according to Ron Raffensperger, Huawei’s chief techie for the IT product line that sits within its Data Centre …

  1. Tom 35

    Dr Oz

    I hear he has some magic pills.

    If the snake oil is not working any more, he might have something to keep the sales flowing.

  2. Truth4u

    What do you expect

    There's no comp sci degree on earth that has anything to do with the skills you need to manage big data.

    It's a complex mix of accounting, computer science, logistics, business analysis, and more. You really need to be like 5 people in one. And yet all we ever hear is how generalists are bad evil people and only experts can be trusted. Fuck. That.

    The expert's job is to do the menial work involved with implementing a generalist's plan. Look at how human societies have always been structured and refute that.

    So you need to hire one generalists and 5 experts, instead of looking for a single "data scientist" (yeah there's a reason there aren't any for hire, who the FUCK would want to do all that hard work alone?). Oh diddums it costs 6x the cost of hiring one person. Did you not realise complex projects would cost money?

    1. Bucky 2

      Re: What do you expect

      Yeah, I'm calling BS on this one, too.

      Big corporations WANT to hire, but just can't find the right person? Singular? For a task that obviously requires a team?

      Boo hoo.

      1. drunk.smile

        Re: What do you expect

        Yep. I agree with you.

        The Big Data snake oil that my firm is selling is based around the idea of collaboration & teams. The 'data scientist' is then reduced to a mathematics geek with a bit of R skills and the ability to explain whatever algorithm they've chosen.

        The real work comes from the IT team of experts integrating things together, the Business Analysts interpreting the customer problems into something that the team can work on together.

        (And yes, a team of IT experts is needed and not a single magic tech guru who can do everything as the ones that can do all of it are both far too expensive and have also reached the point in their careers where they only need to work a few hours a month.

        1. (AMPC) Anonymous and mostly paranoid coward
          Happy

          Re: What do you expect

          And then you need to hire the expert for those few hours a month when the rest of the team needs help. Sadly, PHBs don't seem to get these concepts (my goodness, we can find data entry operators and VB developers, why can't we also find big data scientists at the job centre?). Sheesh

          I doubt PHBs will ever get this. Perhaps only when clever start ups have eaten all of their big data lunch along with all the other lucrative, emerging tech markets.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: What do you expect

      Feature creep in job duties is everywhere. I'm now seeing requirements for basic server admin for... desktop support.

      And phone and scripting and VM and more than a passing understanding of AD and...

      All for desktop support with, naturally, the pay staying the same. Server admins are now expected be programmers as well.

  3. Mephistro

    Big data's being held back by...

    ...the structure of reality, including -but not limited to- Chaos Theory and Information Theory. Both the complexity of the analysis required and the amount of noise grow exponentially with the size and complexity of the datasets.

    Snake oil, indeed. It all probably began with some suit's wet dream of getting rid of 'experts'.

    1. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

      Re: Big data's being held back by...

      ... the rational actor problem. There is no algorithm in the world that can generate "People who viewed this product also bought X" and get me to buy X when I don't really need X.

      It's marketing snake oil. There is some magic out there that can push more product that the customer doesn't want.

  4. Christian Berger

    I guess one factor is ethics

    Smart people tend to act a bit more ethical as they can foresee the consequences of their actions. Therefore those people will understand that storing large amount of data about people is bad as it _will_ be abused eventually.

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