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Which career is better ?

Which is a better career option in the long term: technical career or strategic/business-oriented career?

  • Available Options for me Technical Career : Building statistical and machine learning models, programming, research papers, patents etc Business Oriented : where you are the end user of these models and come up with strategies by working with Product Managers and Developers. I am just getting started ( I don't know my interest) and have opportunities in both areas. Where does a data scientist belong ? Also If I choose the latter, what are the things to learn, should I go for MBA?

  • Answer:

    Both are lucrative career choices which appeal to two different types of people. 1. Technical career : Go for a technical career if : a) you enjoy learning new technologies/ This is quite obvious b) you enjoy going deeper into the technology. Are you a Java developer who looks at Integer.toString() source code just out of curiosity ? As a javascript developer did you ever wonder about how does a number datatype variable in a javascript manage to store both integer and floating  point numbers ? While writing an SQL query did you ever wonder about which charset is being referred to when you sort a varchar datatype column values. If you answer yes to all of these questions, most likely you will enjoy a technical job much more than a management job One thing about a technical career is that as you keep on adding up experience ( and fattening up your paychecks) you are at a disadvantage when compared to relatively younger programmers and to offset your higher pay who have to bring significantly higher value to the table - which basically means you have to keep learning all the time. One advantage that pure technical people enjoy over people managers/product managers is that hands-on developers will always have higher job mobility and they are not necessarily limited to one particular industry 2. Business oriented career Go for a business domain oriented career if : You enjoy/feel curious about finding out the details from a business point of view. For example if you are writing a trade capture platform solution for forex trading, what excites/challenges you more ? reducing the average time to book a trade by 50 mili seconds ? Or analyzing if the forex trading solution can be extended to book equity trades as well ? If its the later you will probably enjoy a more business domain oriented career One limitation of a business analysis/product management oriented career is that your value doesn't necessarily remain the same if you change industry. Regarding doing MBA, I'd say normally its not necessary unless you are working in a business domain that has many technicalities which are difficult to grasp without formal education on that sector. Classic example would be a business analyst working on a system that calculates risk numbers for a bank's rates trading desk. In such cases it is a good idea to go for MBA or industry recognized certifications like CFA or FRM finally I'd say these two roles are not mutually exclusive and in certain industries ( eg investment banking) you can be extremely valuable if you are a bit of both. One of the best business analysts who I have worked with was extremely technically savvy (despite not having a technical background) and was able to comfortably write and execute a complex SQL query to fetch results or write a small piece of code that will read contents from a file and publish it to a middleware. Similarly some of the best developers I have worked with don't see a trade message as just an XML and are quite knowledgeable on the domain front as well

Kaustubh Saha at Quora Visit the source

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I want to start by saying that only you can answer this question. The better career in the long term is the one that suits you better personally. That said, if you have absolutely no preferences and are likely to be equally skilled in both, then I would suggest doing technical first. It's easier and more common to transfer to business later in life if technical doesn't work out for you than it is to transfer from business into technical at a later time. If you ever want to do technical, earlier works better than later.

Anonymous

In order to answer this question (by yourself or somebody else), you need to clearly define criteria for what a "better career option" stands for. If you have opportunities in both areas and, more importantly, if you still haven't decided what area you're more interested in, I would advise to select first one of these areas (based on your short-term goals) and immerse yourself in it (via volunteering, internships or jobs) for some time (reasonably long to get a feeling of what it's like to work in this area, but not too long). Then, do the same with your other career option. After some time, hopefully, you will be able to decide, which career option is better for you, based on matching your experiences in each area with the better career option criteria that you previously defined. That's how I would approach your main question. In regard to your other questions, I think the following. Data scientist belong to the intersection of technical and business fields. That's what differs this role from the roles of a statistician, a software engineer or a business analyst. While highly technical, the role of data scientist implies an ability to understand various business concepts and environments, and apply technical and analytical tools to solving business and organizational problems. In regard to whether it's a good idea to go for an MBA, should you choose a business career option, there is no definite answer for that, as well. It depends on many factors, such as your career and personal goals, financial situation, family obligations, ability to be accepted in top MBA programs and many more. You can research this topic in more detail (including what to learn / how to prepare) by reading Q&A in some Quora categories, such as: , , and .

Aleksandr Blekh

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