Why you shouldn't be a data science generalist – Towards Data Science

I work at a data science mentorship startup, and I've found there's a single piece of advice that I catch myself giving over and over again to aspiring mentees. And it's really not what I would have expected it to be. Rather than suggesting a new library or tool, or some resume hack, I find myself recommending that they first think about what kind of data scientist they want to be. The reason this is crucial is that data science isn't a single, well-defined field, and companies don't hire generic, jack-of-all-trades "data scientists", but rather individuals with very specialized skill sets. To see why, just imagine that you're a company trying to hire a data scientist. You almost certainly have a fairly well-defined problem in mind that you need help with, and that problem is going to require some fairly specific technical know-how and subject matter expertise.