Ask HN: Why do many data science openings ask for a PhD?

2 pointssndean1 comment

Looking on Kaggle and other sites, this is a common minimum (or preferred) qualification:

"PhD degree in a quantitative field (Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Operations Research, Biostatistics)."

What about a PhD would make the applicant more valuable to the company? Is this simply a way of filtering for "ability to perform research"? . . . If not, what quality?

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I think it's mostly because real data science for deep insights or research-type work is actually difficult. The term "data scientist" has been watered down recently, it used to be reserved for those who developed the new statistical learning algorithms rather than just opened a machine learning toolbox like Weka or scikit. In general that requires a PhD or at least an M.S. in one of those fields with significant experience.

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